Deep in the Heart
by deathsteel
Summary: Dean Smith is bad at stepping outside of his comfort zone, at being spontaneous, at living. But he learns more at college than he expected when he repeatedly crosses paths with a mysterious, blue-eyed restless punk named Castiel. Dean learns that the ultimate question isn't 'How do you find love' because sometimes it finds you, but 'How do you make love stay' College AU
1. Chapter 1

No one would ever call Dean Smith impulsive.

He had never done anything spontaneous or that he hadn't planned out precisely down to the last minute detail, analyzing all of the possible outcomes for things that could possibly go wrong causing whatever he was working on to backfire and blow up in his face. So that's probably why it had come as such a big surprise to everyone that knew him that he decided to go to college in Texas, instead of staying in South Dakota near his family and his friends and everything that he already knew was comfortable and safe and predictable.

Frankly, it surprised him too.

University of Texas was his back-up, back-up school; the one he had decided he would only go to if the world was ending or the stars aligned to force him in that direction. Neither one of those things happened, but it _was_ the first acceptance letter that he got in the mail. And after getting 'FAG' carved into the side of his car for the millionth time by the asshole jocks at school who were too scared to give him wedgies or push him into lockers anymore now that puberty had helped him fill out with little to no effort on his part besides LARPing on the weekends with his friends, Ed and Lance who were heading off to opposite coats and Ivy League schools (accepted early admission, of freaking course), getting as far away from Sioux Falls just seemed overwhelmingly appealing.

Jo was the crazy one, the rebel, the one who was steadily giving his dad, Bob, grey hairs at every turn when she snuck out of the house just to get brought home by the sheriff every other weekend and made their mom, Ellen, rant about teen pregnancy to the both of them almost every night over dinner even though Dean had told them multiple times that it was a non-issue as far as he was concerned. She still bought him condoms and dragged Jo to get birth control and asked them both when they were going to cut her some damn slack and bring home a nice boy for once.

His first year in Austin, she asked after the status of his love life every time that she called; saying that it probably wouldn't be that hard for him to meet a real gentleman down there in the Lone Star State. She seemed to be under the impression that all the men in Texas were John Wayne and Clint Eastwood; not the uber-Republican, homophobic bros that he usually sat behind in class who had the dumbest answers to the simplest questions and made him want to die because the smartest conversations he had every week were with the old guys who worked at the comic book store.

So far all of the men he had met were just older versions of the boys he went to high school with, except now they had southern accents. Dean figured if he kept playing the odds though, eventually he would find a guy that would get his sense of humor and how intense he got about Star Wars and would really and truly appreciate his comic book and record collections.

But he didn't meet a guy like that until he had to take the computer course that the college required of everyone no matter what their major was and his name was Sam Wesson. Unfortunately, going on a date with the lanky, handsome, long-haired biochemistry major was weirdly like going on a date with his brother, if he had a brother and it didn't lead to anything more than a bromancy hug at the end and acquiring a roommate who picked up after himself once Dean decided that the dorms were unlivable as long as they didn't have central air conditioning.

They found a house in central Austin, situated up a really steep hill behind a record store called Cheapo's that if nothing else Dean could always find some serious eye candy in when he was killing time between classes or looking for imported singles for the bands that he liked. Ozma, Mineral, Sunny Day Real Estate, Braid, The Promise Ring, mostly late-90s emo stuff when emo still meant cardigans and brown corduroys and glasses that really were prescription and not dark eyeliner, swoopy lazy-eye inducing hair styles, and cutting yourself.

Not that Dean could begrudge a guy for looking good in eyeliner; because since moving to one of the biggest music capitals in the country he saw his fair share of dudes in makeup and he could admit that it was hella attractive on boys with the right eyes. But something about appropriating the genre title for something that used to mean Weezer didn't exactly sit well with him. Sam said it was all relative and just listened to whatever happened to catch his ear, introducing Dean to older stuff like The Replacements and Husker Du that he could also get behind even if their louder, more rambunctious descendents could grate on his nerves just a little.

Sophomore year was the year that Dean got a job at Book People, right down the road from the house that he and Sam were sharing with a peppy redheaded girl named Charlie who really, pretty much only got Dean the job in the first place to shut him up, because she was tired of him always begging her to let him use her discount to buy Kurt Vonnegut books that he already had four copies of. It was also the year that he finally admitted that punk boys were becoming a thing that he thought about more than just in passing.

The first time that he saw him, he was running late to work. Speeding on Sam's bike down the hill past Cheapo's so that he could cut across Lamar and jet down to the book store as quickly as possible before he got stuck working on inventory or shut away in the back room to receive new books by himself with that weirdo Crowley who always always hit on him. It was spring break and for most of the students that didn't hail from Texas, that meant going home for the week or telling your parents you were studying and really going to Port Aransas or Galveston to party and drink and become the subject of incriminating and embarrassing Facebook photos.

But for Dean, it meant working since spring break in Austin usually happened to sync up with the week of South By Southwest that was dedicated to music. People from all over the world flooded into the Texas capital to listen to bands that only played in the United States once or twice a year, forced to sweat out all of the alcohol that they imbibed in the mid-March swelter that started early in the south. Sam was working too and Dean didn't even envy his friend for working at a bar like he had since the previous fall when his roommate first got the job because he got to hang out in an air-conditioned bookstore all day instead of dealing with sweaty, obnoxious drunks and their terrible taste in music.

Book People was a hub for festival goers looking to escape the oppressive Texas heat as well as kill time between sets going on around town and both Dean and Charlie were required to work. It wasn't a big deal for his roommate, since she worked in the cafe part of the store, whipping up lattes and smoothies with the complicated equipment that Dean was too scared to touch, but she had stayed the night at her girlfriend's apartment in South Austin the night before and it was just too much of a hassle to try to fight the traffic in the Impala if it was just him going to the store. And it would have just made him later than he already was anyway, so he stole Sam's bike, leaving his friend to catch up on sleep after the other man shut down the bar he worked at the night before which marked the big kickoff of the music festival on Sixth street where all the major music venues in Austin lived.

It was probably better anyway that he was on the bike, because when Dean did see the lanky dark-haired punk boy leaning against the wall of Cheapo's that faced his street (propped up underneath his favorite graffiti of Audrey Tatou's _Amelie_ that graced the wall) Dean forgot to pedal and almost ran right into one of the cars that was waiting at the light to merge onto the busier cross street of Lamar Boulevard. The stranger was smoking a cigarette and surveying the early morning traffic with an air of disinterested amusement, his lip ring glinting in the sunlight that was struggling to make it through the cloudy mid-March sky.

Dean wanted to stop and gawk just a bit because there where hot guys and then there was this guy, who seemed aloof and dangerous and intriguing in a way that worked for him in all of the right ways, but his name tag was looped around his neck, reminding him of work. And the right leg of his brown pants was rolled up his calf so that it didn't get caught in the chain of Sam's bike and there was no way that someone that good-looking would want to talk to him with his nerdy glasses and his short sleeve plaid button down shirt that Charlie said made him look like an extra from _Revenge of the Nerds. _No way in hell.

The other guy was just so effortlessly handsome in his threadbare black cutoff shorts that had frayed edges and hugged him tightly enough to show off the muscles of his thighs. He had on dirty well-worn Converse that would make Dean's mom hyperventilate if she saw them laying around the house somewhere and his dingy white Ramones t-shirt faded seamlessly into the white-washed walls of Dean's favorite record store that the other man was leaning against. Dean especially appreciated the messy mop of dark hair that made the object of his appreciation look like he had just crawled out of bed or hadn't bothered sleeping at all if the dark circles under his eyes were anything to go by.

Sam would tell him to stop and talk to the guy and give him his number and be confident, but that wasn't Dean. He had never been the kind of person to approach another guy, mostly because if he misjudged and they were straight it could lead to something far worse than a wedgie or getting his car keyed. Luckily the last time his gaydar had completely and utterly failed him had been right after starting at the bookstore with his coworker Aaron who shrugged the whole thing off as a compliment, but it had been embarrassing enough that Dean had decided to let other men approach him if they were interested.

Jo told him he was a cock tease and he didn't know when his sixteen year old sister had started talking to him like that, Charlie said that he was shy, and Dean, well he wasn't sure exactly what it was that made him so afraid to put himself out there, but he was late to work and he didn't have enough time to stop anyway so he swerved around the cars on North Larmar and made it to Book People in enough time to call dibs on working the downstairs reference desk instead of the one upstairs near the children and young adult sections. Becky could do it all day, but Dean could really only feign interest in angsty teen vampire books and Dr. Seuss for so long before he started getting cranky.

The second time he saw him he did talk to him. But not really talk, just like...provide customer service?

It was his job after all, well not _his _job, but Charlie's. And really Dean was lucky to have seen the guy at all again since he was stuck in the backroom on the last day of SXSW, fixing some inventory mess that Crowley just couldn't possibly handle all by himself. Not that he hadn't been looking for him; because he had, but not consciously. Finding little things in other people who asked for his help with finding a book or where the bathroom was because they couldn't understand why there wasn't one downstairs in the bookstore also, he was going to be happy when SXSW was over and he didn't have to deal with tourists anymore who thought he was just a hipster townie that they could treat like crap. It was even worse than working in retail on Christmas.

Charlie's girlfriend, Dorothy, had come in, surprising the redhead with backstage passes to see La Roux where the songstress was performing at Auditorium Shores Stage, opening for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Strokes in the grand culmination of the weeklong festival. His roommate had ducked into the backroom, begging him to cover the cafe for the last hour of his shift so that she could leave early to go home and change out of her milk and syrup spattered t-shirt before the show. He had only agreed to get away from Crowley, telling Charlie that she owed him big time and earning a promise of free drinks the next time he went into Red 7 where the other girl's partner tended bar on the weekends.

He made her show him three times how to use the complicated milk frother that just fogged up his glasses more than anything else before he let her leave, but Dean still prayed that no one would order a latte because smoothies he could make, but espresso drinks were like a completely different language. Luckily almost everyone wanted cold drinks, iced coffee which was just pouring and adding syrup and so easy that anyone could do it or sodas that he just had to pull out of the cold case and ring up before handing them over.

Dean read a battered copy of _Still Life with Woodpecker_ by Tom Robbins, recommended to him by his coworker Lisa when she had heard him grousing about Charlie's red-hair fucking up pretty much every drain in their house to Aaron who had said he had a similar problem with his girlfriend that he lived with. She said the book pretty effectively solved the problem of redheads and was similar to Vonnegut which she knew he liked because practically every book that Dean wrote a recommendation for was by his favorite author and everyone had learned pretty quickly after he started to not touch the display that was dedicated to the man like a shrine at the end of the fiction section downstairs.

He was biting on his lip as he read, a habit that had earned him the derision of more than one boy who's attention he had caught, but hell it was better than biting his fingernails which he used to do when he was a kid until they were bloody and tender. When he was freaking out over the fact that the superheroes in his comic books always seemed to kiss the girls they rescued and never the sidekicks that were always there for them. In junior high he ate instead of biting his nails and that led to more beatings for being the fat, gay kid then he could ever possibly count on both hands, turning him into the introvert that he was today and making him sigh like a girl while he read the unlikely love-story that the author had written his book around.

'_When two people meet and fall in love, there's a sudden rush of magic. Magic is just naturally present then.'_

Dean understood, without understanding because he had never experienced anything like that before with another person. Sam didn't do the monogamous thing and it seemed to work for him, but it just left Dean with a bad taste in his mouth and a sour ball of guilt in his stomach when he would get home from another failed date, crawl into his lonely bed and try to block out the thought that he would die without ever having what his parents had together. Twenty-year olds shouldn't be so fatalistic and he knew that, but Dean had always been too cautious and careful for his own good.

"I think it looks good," A female voice said in front of him causing Dean to look up from his book to see if she was a customer that he needed to help. He prayed she just wanted black coffee. "You should tattoo your head or something. Once your hair grows back no one will see it, it'll be like your shameful little secret."

The voice belonged to a short brunette woman who had her curly, brown hair swept up in a ponytail that complimented the straight bangs she had running across her forehead and revealed the intricate, thorn covered, dark blue rose she had tattooed on her neck. She was wearing grey and black leopard print shorts with a plain white tank top and a black leather vest. Her legs were pale, sporting bruises that ranged in color from dark purple to sickly green all along her shins right down to her little black flats that had ornamental silver skulls and crossbones on them.

She had more tattoos, ones that trailed down her arms of old movie monsters (Dean could pick out the bride of Frankenstein and Dracula and one that looked like that guy from Evil Dead with the chain saw hand) and more on her thigh of a really angry looking unicorn surrounded by rainbows and clouds with blood dripping from its horn. The girl also had a septum piercing, which Dean had always admired, but been too chicken to get even when he had gone with Charlie and her girlfriend to get a portrait tattoo of the other woman's little black terrier that had just passed away on her bicep next to the one she already had of her dad. Charlie had gotten her nose pierced then; just a little stud that she had only agreed to get if Dean got something too, needless to say his face still had the exact amount of holes it was supposed to have and no more.

"My head feels cold," the man she was with grumbled, tossing down a patch covered black backpack onto one of the little cafe tables that Dean was supposed to be babysitting for his roommate before spinning around to face the first-time barista. He ran a hand abortedly over the sides of his shorn head, where he was probably used to hair being before sighing and crossing his arms tightly over his chest instead. "Next time I make a bet with my brother about anything, remind of what a dick he is."

Dean choked for a second on nothing, probably his own stupid tongue or something because even though he had (but hadn't) been looking for the boy that he had spotted outside of Cheapo's earlier in the week, the last thing he had expected was to see him in his bookstore. In retrospect, the assumption was pretty ridiculous, Book People was practically the biggest bookstore in Austin and it was right across the street from the most well-known record store in the city, Waterloo's; people came into the store just to say that they had been there, regardless of whether or not there was an author doing a signing that day.

The other boy looked even better up close, standing in the brightly lit bookstore with the rows of magazines and people and musicians creating the perfect backdrop behind him that all just faded into an inane, fuzzy nothingness for Dean as he struggled to compose himself so that he wouldn't look like a spaz. He could see the color of his eyes now, blue that was still rimmed by dark circles that looked more like smudged, slept in eyeliner than the telltale signs of a night spent sleepless like he had originally thought. His hair had been massacred though, shaved down short on the sides until it was barely stubble and leaving the middle a hastily, styled drooping mohawk that still looked long enough for someone to get a pretty decent grip on if they were lucky enough to get to kiss the stranger's full chapped lips.

"I just live with him, Clarence. You're the one who had to grow up with the guy, here let me get you a drink or something to make it up to you," The girl said, rifling out an ornate looking cigarette case from her back pocket and extracting a folded twenty from behind the neat row of rolled tobacco tubes.

"You've been buying my drinks all week, Meg." The other man muttered, shoving his hands deeply into the pocket of his tight, dark washed denim shorts; once again cutoffs that were held up by a silver studded leather belt that hung low on his hips. He had on his Converse again, along with a faded black Alkaline Trio shirt that had a skeleton couple holding hands screen printed onto it in crackled white and red ink. "You've got to stop. I can't pay you back or anything."

It took everything Dean had not to groan at the abashed look that was on the other man's face as he scuffed the toes of his dirty sneakers together and toyed with his lip ring while the other girl waved off his statement and moved closer to the register so she could order. Clarence, what an old fashioned name for a guy like that; it was like Seymour or Oscar, something that grandfathers were named and it didn't fit the other man at all. Dean decided he was going to call him 'blue eyes', smirking at his own Rat Pack reference and ignoring the part of his mind that was screaming at him that he was a stalker and creepy and the guy was probably straight anyway so he should not be crushing on him.

"I've already told you how you can return the favor," The woman flirted, winking at the other man and causing him to blush a light pink that stood out against his stubbled, pale cheeks before she spun back around to face Dean; the smile that she had worn for the other man immediately dropping off of her face. "I need a double soy latte with hazelnut and whatever my friend wants."

Dean started cursing her in his head the minute she said 'double' because unless it was just espresso, which it never fucking was, that mean that he was going to have to steam milk for her stupid, uppity drink. Why couldn't people just order coffee anymore? He just drank black coffee because caffeine was caffeine was caffeine, it didn't have to be fancy.

"I'll just have a large iced coffee, black," The other man muttered, side-eyeing the woman who had moved back to wrap and arm around his waist, which just set Dean's teeth more on edge as he nodded and tossed his glasses agitatedly down next to the register before moving towards the milk frother that was possessed by satan and hated him. "And uh...I like your shirt by the way."

Dean squinted down at the worn, green Jets to Brazil shirt that he was wearing, mostly because he was excited that Blake Schwarzenbach's new band, Forgetters was wrapping up their weekend in town by playing at the bar that Sam worked at so he pretty much was guaranteed in the door even without having bought a ticket or wristband for the show, and shrugged. The shirt was older than Jo was probably and he had bought it on eBay back in high school after discovering the band through Pandora.

No one in his hometown listened to music like the band made, honest and raw and emotional in all the ways that Dean was scared of being around the hyper-masculine boys he went to school with. Through music he had learned that he wasn't the only boy with too many confusing feelings out walking around in the world and it had helped him make it through the slurs and the whispers that all of his classmates indulged in behind his back.

He wanted to speak, to thank the other man for the compliment and ask him about what kind of music he liked. Alkaline Trio were a little on the morbid side for his taste, but they weren't super loud and you could understand the lyrics which was an improvement on some of the other more main-stream punk bands floating around out there these days. But his tongue felt thick in his mouth and it was just a struggle to keep breathing when he saw the other man lean down and give the brunette girl a quick peck on the cheek.

"Thanks, dollface." He muttered to her before winking at Dean and going to sit down at the table they had commandeered with his coffee.

Dean must have been staring at the other man still, admiring the way that his shoulders moved as he walked and noticing the dark ink peeking out on the back of his neck and biceps from underneath his shirt. Clarence looked like the kind of boy who would have tattoos, lots of them and Dean thought it sucked that he was totally hopeless at flirting because even with him showing up here with a girl in tow, he still had the overwhelming urge to card his fingers through what was left of the other man's messy hair and kiss him hard enough that he could taste every cigarette he had smoked for the last week and an indention of the other man's hooped lip ring would be left pressed into his mouth for everyone to see.

He must have been staring because the brunette girl slapped her money down hard on the counter top separating them when Dean exchanged her latte back for his glasses that remained steam and milk free while also bringing the cafe into sharp, harsh focus. Specifically the knowing smirk that she was giving him that made him want to just curl up behind the counter and cry with his face pressed into his book so that no one would see it. Girls like her hand been giving him that smirk all his life so he knew what it meant without her saying it, but that didn't stop her from doing it anyway, spiteful fucking bitch that she was.

"Oh, yea," She said smugly, tilting her head toward where the other man was sitting reading one of the Austin Chronicles that had been left lying on the tables all week since they listed when and where the SXSW shows were happening around town. "I'm totally hitting that tonight."

Dean shrugged again, pushing his glasses up his nose and looking one last time at the punk boy who had caught his eye over a week ago. When Ruby showed up to relieve him, reprimanding him for some part on the espresso machine that he had bent or not cleaned properly after using it he wasn't really sure, Dean just grabbed his cardigan and his messenger bag and resolutely told himself to not look back at the guy who was not only out of his league, but didn't even play the same sport that he did. He should've known, all of the boys he liked were always straight. And straight boys will break your heart every single fucking time.


	2. Chapter 2

"I just don't understand why you have to make it so complicated," Sam complained to Dean as they waited on the padded benches in the lobby of the South Lamar location of Alamo Drafthouse for their movie to start.

The larger man was nursing a Bloody Mary that he had gotten from the bar, sweet-talking the burly, bearded bartender for his hair of the dog hangover cure that Sam was technically still too young to be drinking. He had gotten Dean some bottled, fruity Lambic beer; something that the other man had said would go good with the crepes that Dean was hell-bent on getting for second breakfast while they watched _Pretty in Pink_ at the movie theatre cum restaurant.

South By Southwest had ended weeks ago and Dean had finally stopped looking for the punk boy that had caught his attention, the one that had been haunting his dreams and had made him find every little flaw that could possibly exist in any guy that gave him more than just a cursory glance because they weren't him. They weren't blue-eyed, shaggy haired Clarence. He had seen the girl though, Peg or whatever her name had been, perusing the cookbook section when he had gone to get an iced tea from Charlie on his break; she had been alone, frowning at vegan cookbooks and while it shouldn't make him feel better that blue eyes wasn't with her, it did just a little.

But Sam had long ago gotten sick of listening to him moon over yet another mysterious, unattainable straight guy and Charlie had stopped paging him over their walkie talkies at work every time she saw a guy with dark hair wearing ripped jeans and a band t-shirt. There were just too many of them and none of them ever turned out to be him. So Dean had told her to give up playing lookout for him, acting like the most enthusiastic wingman ever just so he could stalk some guy who had made an off-handed comment about a shirt for a band that hardly anyone even listened to anymore.

They had gone out, more like Charlie and Sam had dragged Dean out, the night before to celebrate the ending of the semester which Charlie said she was only celebrating because it meant that all of her bandwidth wasn't stolen anymore by her two roommates researching stuff for school. She had a degree already, some associate's degree that she had gotten online somewhere in like two weeks for computer sciencey stuff that confused the hell out of Dean. He was pretty sure she was a hacker on the side, working for Wikileaks or something because there was no way in hell she could afford her swanky desktop setup along with pretty much every game system ever invented on just a Book People barista salary.

Dean had enough trouble just affording his part of the rent and bills half the time, at least the dorms had been covered under his scholarship, but it was just too much like living in a cubicle and he was already going to be doing that for the rest of his life once he finished school anyway, so he didn't see any reason to make himself more miserable than absolutely necessary. This had been the same reasoning that Sam had used on him to guilt him into going to Sherlock's for their pub quiz night; reuniting their team, Trivia Newton John, that was comprised of the three roommates along with Charlie's girlfriend.

Also, Dean was leaving. Going home to South Dakota for a couple of weeks so he could make at least an attempt to be a good influence on Jo, who his dad said was becoming completely out of control in his absence, and see Ed and Harry who were coming back home for the summer too from Yale and Stanford respectively. It was the first time he and all of his old high school buddies would be in town together again since one or more of them had never quite been able to make it home for the holidays like they had originally planned in the past. They had been plotting an epic Dungeons and Dragon tournament over Facebook for the last month and Dean had had gotten Charlie to help him hone up on his dungeon master skills, much to Sam's embarrassment and derision every time the other man brought a guy home to find the two of them talking wizards and enchanted forests and twenty sided dice.

So the celebration had been more like a going away party, but Dean's flight back home wasn't until four and he had every intention of being well and truly smashed before he steeped foot onto the giant metal tube that would either hurtle him back home to his mom and pie and a life that had been safe and predictable, but wasn't nearly as colorfully comfortable as the one he had now in Texas or straight into the ground to his sure and firey death. He fucking hated flying, but his dad had bought the ticket and Dean felt too guilty cashing it in for a bus ticket or gas money for the Impala because he knew exactly how much his dad made in his auto shop. It just seemed like a huge slap in the face to the older man who always wondered where exactly Jo had gotten her stubbornness from.

There, right there dad. That's where she got it from.

But they had lost the pub quiz, which they always did because even though the four of them were all relatively smart and well read and had a little bit of knowledge about a lot of different things, they never took it seriously. Especially Dorothy, who liked to answer all of the history questions with song lyrics by The Smiths if she could manage it. However she had said that lyrics from The Cure were equally amusing, she had a thing for bands whose names started with the word 'the'. THE raincoats, THE clash, THE whatevers...there were a lot of fucking bands that she listened to. Her and Charlie both were constantly making each other lovey little mixtapes, tapes not CDs because it was harder to skip past the songs that way (Dor's explanation when Dean asked) and Dean envied their relationship so much that sometimes it made him sick.

He and Sam had left the pair of them sitting at the breakfast nook, hair sleep rumpled and sex tangled in mismatched Wonder Woman and Super Girl pajamas sets that they had gotten switched around probably without the two girls' realizing it, singing some disgustingly cute little song to each other about how in love they were. It sounded like doo wop almost, but Dean had decided that he needed something sweet and filled with Nutella almost immediately upon waking so he hadn't heard more than Charlie murmer, "Shooby do, I've got a crush on you" and Dor reply with "And na na na, I think I like you" before the world had tilted just a little bit and he had felt like he was going to throw up.

The two boys had beat a hasty retreat to the Impala and rushed to try to catch the brunch-time showing of _Pretty in Pink_ because it was the only thing playing and Sam had a little thing for John Cryer anyway so it all worked out for the best. But Dean couldn't help moping when his old Hey Mercedes tape started playing 'Frowning of a Lifetime' as they sat in the traffic that was flowing sluggishly across the bridge that spanned the Colorado River where stalwart and predictable as ever, people were already tubing and canoeing with their coolers floating along behind them in the water attached by bungee cords.

_Breathing out curls of smoke into the world.  
I'm never gonna find you, never will remind you,  
To cover up your breath when you're back up at the desk_

He could only think of smoke curling out of chapped, pink lips and a sliver hoop that sparkled in dim sunlight before Sam had to turn off the tape, punching the buttons on the dashboard until the local college rock station started playing instead so that Dean would stop zoning out long enough to find them a parking spot in the shopping center that the theater was located in.

His roommate had known exactly where his mind was at during the song because it was the same place that his mind had been since spring break and Sam was still irritated that Dean had not taken his advice about the whole thing and gone to every bar in downtown Austin, hunting for the punk boy with the freshly shaven mohawk so that he could jump his bones. To the other man it was just that simple, for Sam it was always that simple.

Dean had gone to Sam's bar instead, convinced that having the lead singer of one of his favorite bands just breathing the same air as him nearby would make him feel better and it had, for a little while. Until the show had ended and he had been left looking down at the main floor from the balcony of the outdoor stage at all the scattered beer cans and cigarette butts and happy couples leaning tipsily on each other as they headed back to their homes and hotel rooms all across his adopted city.

So now he was getting a lecture, again. THE lecture, about how he was young and virile and shouldn't be looking for something serious because no one else their age was right now; about how he should just find a guy or maybe even a few guys that he didn't mind getting down with because you only live once, just be fucking safe about it. It wasn't his first time hearing it and Dean was pretty sure it wouldn't be his last.

"I mean, why don't you just get Grindr or go put a missed connection on Craigslist or something. Find a guy or _your _guy, I don't fucking care, Dean. Just get laid already," Sam continued, perking up when a bouncy looking blonde girl in a Drafthouse shirt ushered them towards the theater that their movie was playing in. "In the year that we've been living together how many dates have you been on?"

"Two," Dean mumbled, trudging up the auditorium style stairs to a seat that was midway up the theater, picking two in the middle that would provide the perfect view of Molly Ringwald's awkwardness that even outdid Dean's.

"And how many of those led to second dates, no forget that. How many of those led to a goodnight kiss?"

"Zero," he replied snappishly, plopping down in the seat and removing his glasses so that he could clean them before the lighting dimmed and his couldn't see anything. "Y'know not all of us want to be booty calls for the rest of our lives. I wouldn't mind meeting someone, settling do—"

"Adopting some gaybies, living in a house with a white picket fence, and taking someone else's last name like a proper hetero couple?" Sam finished sarcastically, fishing out one of the menus from under the long wooden counter top that served as the table for the row that they were sitting on as the theater continued to fill up around them. "You don't have to conform for the sake of conforming, just because that's what you're used to seeing. If you want to be a hedonist, be a hedonist. Who cares?"

"And if I don't want to be the next Bacchus, what then Sam?" Dean asked, scratching out his order onto one of the little slips of paper that the theater provided and posting it up on the thin metal railing that ran along the outside edge of the counter. "Some people are actually okay with being choosy, it doesn't make them a prude or boring or whatever. It just means that they want it to actually mean something when they have sex with another person, I can remember the name of every single person I've slept with? Can you?"

Sam shrugged, flicking a disinterested eye over the waitress that had stepped up to take their order before he pointed out the eggs Benedict on the menu, pointedly gesturing with his Bloody Mary glass to the woman before turning his attention back to Dean. "I have a book, their names are in it. I know it sounds bad, but it's all very organized and scientific. There's ratings and scales and data; it means something too, just something different then your less fun, sex once a year rule you live by."

"God," Dean groaned watching the images that had been personalized to go with their movie flickering across the screen. It was all old 80s commercials for things like Tab and Reebok pump sneakers interspersed with clips from Alf and Belinda Carlisle music videos. "It has been a year hasn't it? You're like the fucking Bruce Banner of sex with all your data and shit and I'm like..."

"I feel like you're going to be that crazy cat lady off of the Simpsons." Sam finished for him, taking an experimental bite out of the celery stalk in his drink before shrugging and munching on it contemplatively. "Y'know, that one that throws cats at people when they get on her lawn? That's going to be you and all of your cats are going to be named Clarence."

"It's true," he groaned, crossing his arms on the counter top and flopping down onto them dramatically.

The lighting flickered above him, signaling that the movie was about to start, but Dean wasn't even sure if all the feel-good John Hughes movies in the world would be enough to make him feel like he wasn't going to end up being just what Sam said he was going to be, crazy and alone with his face eaten by cats when the coroner finally found him.

"Hey it could be worse," Sam offered, poking Dean hard in the side of the head until he sat back up, straightening his glasses with a disgruntled sounding sigh. "You could be that guy, pornstache."

Dean barked out a laugh when he noticed the man that Sam was surreptitiously pointing out, coming up the stairs and excusing his way along the aisle in front of them with a cell phone pressed to his ear. He was wearing a blue and green paisley pearl-snap shirt unbuttoned over a plain white V-neck, the sleeves were rolled up, revealing an intricate tattoo of a spider right below the curve of his elbow on his forearm. His hair was long enough to rival Sam's, which had reached shoulder length over the last year of him not allowing anyone to touch it, only it was pulled back into a small ponytail and he did indeed have the most ridiculous looking handlebar mustache that could possibly exist.

"No, Baldur and I are not a thing anymore." The man was saying petulantly into his phone, settling into the seat in from of Sam who just rolled his eyes and made a blabbermouth gesture with his hand towards Dean who had to cover his mouth with his own hand to keep from laughing. "Why? Because he thinged someone else in Baton Rouge when he was there for some fucking weirdo woodworking convention or something. Yea...ha ha, Baldur does Baton Rouge, real funny Cas."

Their waitress arrived back with another drink for Sam and a glass of water for Dean, eyeing the man in front of them with an irritated little frown on her face.

"If he doesn't put that away by the time the previews end let me know," she said, hooking a thumb at the guy who was so short that Dean could barely see the top of his head over the chair in front of him, but he could sure as hell hear him talking.

"Speaking of thinging people, when you decide to fuck one of my roommates next time you visit could you just give me a heads up or something?...Because it's awkward Cas, they've been fighting since you fucking hitch-hiked back off to whatever little scene haven you're living in now and Richie told me he can't handle living with her anymore now... He's scared she's going to poison his food, Cas! You have to think of people's feelings before you just do shit like that," the man paused for a second; listening to whatever the other person was saying to him.

Dean hoped that he would be ending his call soon because the lights had officially dimmed and the ominous warning that the theatre liked to play regarding cell phones was coming up soon. Plus Sam was starting to look murderously annoyed and the last time his roommate had gotten that look in his eye, they had both been kicked out of the Slaughter Lane location along with Charlie during a very memorable quote-a-long showing of _The Big Lebowski_.

"Well then you should have told her. It's not my place to tell her that you don't like her like that, you're a grown up and we don't even live in the same state anymore, I can't keep cleaning up your messes. I'm out a roommate n—"

"Excuse me," Sam began politely, ducking underneath their shared table top to reach a hand between the seat so he could tap the man on the shoulder. "The movie is about to start, could you please and I mean this in the politest way possible, shut the fuck up already?"

He knew that Sam was joking, because otherwise he wouldn't have prefaced the curse with an 'excuse me'. His roommate would have just snatched the phone out of the smaller man's hand and refused to give it back until after the movie, probably ending up flirting and getting a number before all was said and done with while Dean watched baffled from the sidelines at how easy it was for Sam to just pick up guys when he always struggled with it so much.

Dean felt like he could visibly see the other man's mustache bristling in irritation, the frown lines that started at his mouth and formed between his eyebrows as his golden eyes flickered dismissively over Sam before he grimaced and turned back around in his seat to continue talking to whoever he was on the phone with.

"No, it's nothing, Cas...Just some bridge troll being an asshole and telling me to shut up, but when has that ever worked for anyone. Well, yea dad maybe...so when are you coming back to visit? I'm asking so that I can make sure that the ice queen is happily ensconced in a relationship of some kind before you do...So she doesn't hit on you anymore, though I know you didn't feel bad about flirting with her when she was paying for all of your shit."

Sam gave Dean a disbelieving look before doing what he had expected him to do in the first place, reaching out one of his gargantuan hands and plucking the phone out of the other man's before fluidly ducking back out from under the counter top and settling himself back into his seat, ignoring the undignified squawk of the man in front of them as he firmly ended the call and the glowing screen dimmed. The larger man slipped it into his pocket of his flannel button down that he was wearing and crossed his arms over his chest, smirking in the dim light of the previews when the mustachioed man jumped up from his seat and spun around to face him.

"What the fuck, man?!" The guy yelled causing heads all over the theatre to turn in their direction just as the warning started playing saying that anyone causing a disturbance would be kicked out of the theater and all complaints should be given directly to the waiters so that they could take care of it. "That's fucking theft, Neanderthal! Give me my phone back before I go and get the manager to turn your ass to grass."

"Hmmm, no." Sam said smugly, nudging Dean in the side who was just trying to do his best not to melt into a puddle of embarrassment in his seat when a literal hoard of people in Drafthouse t-shirts started making their way up the stairs towards them. "Now you can either sit down or I'm sure these people would be happy to see you out. But if I miss one second of Duckie then you and I are going to have to have words in the parking lot."

"Sam, no." Dean hissed softly, grinning sheepishly at the surly looking purple haired waiter who had just redirected the shorter man's attention, pointing towards the stairs with a stern look on his face. A tattooed Asian girl was heading in his and Sam's direction and fuck all Dean had wanted was some crepes, why did Sam always have to make a fucking scene everywhere they went? "I just wanted to eat breakfast, give the guy his phone back."

Sam grumbled unintelligibly beside him, scrubbing a hand through his hair and sighing dramatically when the shorter man stomped out of the movie theater, still protesting and giving the larger man the evilest eye Dean had ever seen with a waiter and waitress flanking him.

"Do you have his phone sir?" The Asian waitress asked softly when she reached them, holding out her hand for the device that Sam had pocketed.

"For fucks sake," Sam cursed, rising to his feet and crawling out of the aisle underneath the countertop so that he could walk along the narrow walkway that had been put in for the waitstaff to use. "I'll give it back, apologize or whatever. But really, who doesn't turn their phone off when they go into a theater?'

Dean shrugged and motioned for Sam to hurry up, the movie was starting and his roommate was definitely going to miss some Duckie screen time already, not that the other man didn't already own every single John Hughes movie on VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray and practically any other format he could possibly get his hands on. The director was to Sam what Vonnegut was to Dean and once his roommate had made the comparison, Dean had stopped poking fun of the other man so much for having literally seven copies of _Some Kind of Wonderful_.

By the time his food had shown up, Nutella freakin' crepes with bananas and berries and all kinds of unhealthy stuff masquerading as healthy and Dean knew that it was his last chance to eat something totally and completely terrible for him before he went back home to the low-carb, low-sodium, low-appetizing meals that his mom made to help keep his dad's cholesterol under control for the next two weeks, Sam still hadn't come back from making his amends with the other theater go-er. He surreptitiously checked his pockets of his jeans to make sure that Sam hadn't stolen his keys and taken off in his car yet again and felt his own cell phone vibrating weakly against his thigh.

He didn't even need to read the message that briefly lit up the screen of his cell phone when he pulled it out of his pocket, because he knew what it said and he knew who it was from because it was far from the first time that Sam had ditched him somewhere in favor of having sex instead. It didn't stop him from being pissed off though, what kind of person did that? Normal college students probably, but it didn't make it less shitty for Sam to do it to him and Charlie and Dorothy pretty much anytime any of them went anywhere with him. Even the fucking grocery store! And those Whole Foods hippie boys were pretty damn flexible according to his roommate, maybe Dean should stop being so surprised that his friends always picked getting laid over hanging out with him.

If he had someone who wanted him then he probably would never even leave his bedroom in the first place either.

Dean scribbled out a note to his and Sam's waitress on one of the little white slips of paper asking her for a to-go box for the other man's eggs Benedict before folding himself up as small as he could in his cushy theater seat and forcing his mind to focus on how ugly Molly Ringwald's dress ended up looking instead of seeing all of the parallels between himself and Iona who was still struggling to find the one and pining for the days when beehives were all the rage, just like Dean pined for the days when people didn't think that being in a relationship was a curse. God, he was such a fucking freak.

* * *

"I'm bringing my roommate, Alan," Ed told Dean via Skype the second night that he was home. "I hope that's not a problem. He doesn't know how to play D&D, but he said he doesn't mind watching and learning. He didn't want to stay in our apartment with the weird Chilean guy that we're subletting to so I said he could come home with me for the summer."

"It's cool with me," Dean replied with a shrug, scratching idly at the stubble that he always neglected when he was at home, mostly because it deterred his mom kissing him on the cheek in public when his face felt like sandpaper. "Is Maggie coming?"

"Yea, is Maggie coming?" Harry added excitedly; causing Dean to snort at how obvious his old friend sounded to everyone but Ed anytime the other man's adopted sister was brought up.

Harry had had a crush on Maggie since sophomore year in high school, when their friend's sister had finally discovered make-up and Star Wars novelizations. Dean could see it, almost. If she were just a bit taller and had more testosterone and less boobs he would be all over that too, but he was pretty sure she liked Harry just as much as he liked her, the whole brother awkwardness was the only thing holding the two of them back.

She had just graduated herself though and was heading off to UCLA in the fall, choosing the west coast college instead of going to her brother's alma mater, which Dean had tried to tell Harry was a good sign, but the other man didn't believe that he was good enough for the super smart, funny girl who had always been on the edges of their circle of friends. High school and getting beat up all of the time had done a real number on the entire trio of boys as far as self-esteem went.

"Yea, I think she said she'd come by after she got off work or whatever," Ed replied, glancing over his shoulder when a body moved behind him on the screen, a hand appearing briefly to clap him hard on the shoulder and jostle him slightly in his seat before wandering off back out of sight. "I'm trying to talk her into bringing pizza with her annnndd...okay, now Dean I really think you're going to like my roommate."

"And why do you think that?" Dean deadpanned, leaning over to move the needle on his old suitcase record player back to the beginning on the new Superchunk album that Jo had gotten him as a surprisingly thoughtful late birthday present that he was pretty sure his mom had guilted her into buying him.

His room had been untouched since the last time he had visited during Christmas break, all the way down to the pair of navy blue Chucks that he had been looking for literally since it had started getting warm enough to wear shorts in Texas, so months. Dean's mom hadn't even made the bed for him, stating that she wasn't his goddamn maid when she picked him up from the airport, asking him whether or not he had a boyfriend yet and what the hell was he eating in the South because he had lost so much weight since December; chattering over the buzzing hangover that he had from the more vodka than orange juice screwdriver that he had chugged out of a thermos as Charlie had driven him to the airport in the Impala because Sam had been nowhere to be found since leaving the movie theater.

It was comforting in a way, to be back in his hometown because he was just as anonymous here in some respects as he was in Texas, but going out to restaurants and bars meant that he always ran into people from high school. People who usually only remembered him for one of two reasons: either they had been one of the countless popular kids who had swirled and bullied him into near oblivion by the time he spent his senior prom holed up with Star Trek in his best friend's basement or they had been one of the hapless, unsuspecting spectators at graduation when Dean had stood up to give his valedictorian speech about how the small high school in Sioux Falls was completely and utterly fucked as long as they allowed sports to have precedence over academics before condemning all of the parents who raised their children to be intolerant jerks who picked on the one openly gay kid to the point where Dean didn't even admit to people where his hometown was anymore.

The stunned silence that had followed his pretty much coming out to the whole town sounded a lot like that scratchy noise that you heard when a record ended on a turntable. His dad had stood up and started a very iconic slow clap while his mom had just buried her face in her hands and Jo had jumped to her feet and shouted "Fuck Yea!" loud enough to drown out the sounds of Ellen's hysterical laughter. Dean had been slightly drunk off of Harry's mom's winecoolers at graduation, but even explaining that to people didn't make them want to hear the speech that he had actually written and then forgotten on his folding chair that he had been sitting on during the graduation ceremony.

"Because Ed thinks he might be gay," Harry explained, frowning disapprovingly at their friend who was frantically shushing the other man through their shared video phone call. "And he wants you to do your mojo on him or whatever, find out for him so that he doesn't have to ask."

"Guys I can't even tell when someone I'm interested in is gay or not," Dean sighed, pulling his glasses off and cleaning them with the edge of his old, worn K Records t-shirt that he had been ecstatic to find stacked on top of his dresser with a bunch of other clothes that Jo had apparently stolen from him since he had moved out. "It's not like I have a little radar or something that just goes off when other dudes who like dudes are around."

"That would be an awesome superpower though," Ed pointed out, glancing back over his shoulder again. "Would really come in handy right about now. Anyway, guys I've got to go. Mom is shouting that dinner is ready and she keeps asking me why I can't be as polite as Alan, dude's making me look bad. D&D tomorrow, same time as always?"

"Same time, same place," Harry piped, saluting Ed before the other man nodded and his portion of the screen went black. The other man let out a thankful sigh and gave Dean an apologizing shrug for their friend's complete lack of tact that Dean had long ago gotten used to. "So you're still flying solo in Texas, huh?"

"Don't worry," Dean replied with a smirk. "I'll probably at least have a boyfriend by the time you and Maggie get your shit together and set a date for the wedding."

"And with that I'm gonna go," the other man said quickly, blushing even in the dim lighting of his own old bedroom turned home office at his parent's house. "And don't sell yourself short, Deano. You're a real catch; you'll get a lawyer or something someday."

"What if I don't want a lawyer?" Dean mumbled not meaning for the other man to hear him, but of course he did. Harry may be oblivious about girls, but the guy had always had like supersonic hearing or something.

"Whatever you want, dude. Lawyer, doctor, fucking folk singer. As long as he makes you happy and treats you right, I don't care. Just don't bring up the whole Maggie thing in front of Ed, you know how he was when she "dated" that boy from space camp when we were kids."

"Yea yea, see you tomorrow." Dean replied, settling back into the rolling chair that he kept at his computer desk with a sigh.

He had just about decided to take Sam's advice and move on. There were plenty of guys his type in Austin; punks boys with green or blue or purple hair. Boys that had lips rings and tattoos and that sinewy hidden muscle thing going on that he apparently really really liked. Maybe all of this was just a phase, the long-awaited rebelliousness that his mother thanked god for passing over Dean when he was doling it out, even though he had apparently given enough to her daughter to make up for it. Maybe he just needed to get it out of his system, like when he had sat down and watched all of Veronica Mars in one weekend, then it would be over and he would know what the big deal was about one night stands that Sam seemed to prefer over real relationships.

Because he was just really tired of being alone and though being lonely was probably something completely different Dean could really only work on fixing one thing at a time.

* * *

Author Note: Guys, guys! Look, I updated something! Whoa! I'm seriously so sorry for disappearing for so long, but I have the next three days off and I'm going to try (fingers crossed) to do a lot of writing. No Cas in this chapter or maybe like...background Cas, but don't worry he's coming back soon in all of his tattooed, irreverent punk boy glory. Kisses and hugs for all of the support on just the first chapter!


	3. Chapter 3

This was by far the most uncomfortable D&D game of Dean's life and that included one time when Ed thought it would be a good idea to play strip D taking off a piece of clothing anytime someone rolled an odd number. They had been fourteen and while Dean had known that he was gay, no one else did yet so he had just been thankful that Maggie had barged in and declared them all weirdos before running back off to her Barbie dolls or boy bands or whatever it was that twelve year old girls liked. A couple weeks later he came out and it had been a surprise to no one except for maybe Jo who really only stressed about it for like two weeks before her meddling ten year old self had decided that Dean should date her after-school twirling instructor. Who was balding and probably the most closeted man in Sioux Falls.

He had managed to extricate himself from that awkward situation with the help of Ed and Harry, but now that his friends were the cause of all of the awkwardness...Dean was absolutely fucked.

This time Maggie hadn't so much as barged in as she had just tagged along with Ed and his roommate, Alan, to the game, saying that she hadn't actually hadn't had to work after all while smiling shyly at Harry who suddenly hadn't known what to do with his hands. That had been more funny than uncomfortable, but after about twenty minutes of seeing how Alan acted around his friend...Completely ignoring the hopelessly inept flirting that he had directed at the newcomer himself at Jo's insistence that it would be the only way that Dean would be able to tell if the stranger living with his old friend was gay, in favor of smiling confusedly at Ed as they had explained the general rules of how the roleplaying game worked. And well, Dean didn't know about gay, but the guy was definitely head over heels for Edwin Zeddmore.

"Well what do I do?" Ed hissed at him under his breath when Alan went upstairs to grab another can of soda out of the fridge in Harry's parents' kitchen.

"I don't know," Dean shrugged, shuffling through his pages of scenarios that he had made up with Charlie for the game. They were getting off track from playing, had been since everyone showed up and started focusing more on catching up with what each other was doing now than what they had actually gotten together to do in the first place. "Break it to him gently that you don't like dudes? This guy that I work with had a great analogy about cologne and perfume that made me feel like not a complete jackass when I asked him out."

"Okay..." The other man began sounding perplexed before shaking his head and pushing his own glasses back up his nose, causing Dean to unconsciously do the same. "But, I mean. I do like him, he's a good guy. Alan cooks for me all the time, we have the same taste in movies and books, he's really funny. I don't want to lose him, I couldn't imagine my life without him. He's like...my best friend now, sorry dude."

"It's cool," Dean said, waving the other man off and glancing at the basement stairs when he heard the door at the top leading from the kitchen open again. "I mean, it's not like it was just going to be me and you and Harry for the rest of our lives. I'm pretty close to my friends in Texas so I get it, but you not telling Alan how you feel about all of this is just going to make things worse in the long run. What if you want to start seeing someone? Do you realize how hard that would be for him to watch? No, tell him. Do it fast, like pulling off a band-aid and if you're really such good friends then you'll survive this."

"When should I do it?" Ed muttered under his breath, smiling wide when Alan sauntered across the basement and handed him a Mountain Dew, popping the tab on his own can of Coke and taking a sip before he settled down in the chair next to Dean's friend with a bemused smile on his face.

"I got you the last Dew, Eddie," Alan explained, tipping his can at the one in Ed's hand. "I know you like them better than Coke, I can run out and get some more if you want once you guys get knee deep in dungeoning."

Dean watched how the other man leaned close when he said it; knee brushing against his old friend's and swallowed hard to fight against the lump in his throat. "Sooner would probably be better than later."

Ed nodded quickly and Dean could see that the other man was blushing hard under the intensity of Alan's stare before he stammered out that he needed to talk to Alan alone. The other man seemed elated by the suggestion and quickly climbed to his feet, following Ed across the basement behind Dean to the part where Harry's dad kept his model train sets. Dean didn't want to watch this; it would be too painfully familiar to how Aaron had let him down gently and kindly when Dean had asked the very heterosexual Book People employee out for coffee shortly after starting to work there.

He turned back to Maggie and Harry who had surreptitiously been making goo-goo eyes at each other since they had all sat down at the folding card table that the other man had set up in his basement in preparation for their game. Before he and Ed had started talking, Maggie had been telling Harry about her college plans and they had been talking about California in excited whispers; about how much better it was than South Dakota. Dean was pretty sure that anywhere was better than Sioux Falls, but you didn't see him bragging about Texas all over the place.

Then again, he didn't really have anything to brag about. Charlie and Sam were good roommates and great friends, but who wanted to hear him talk about how he hadn't done dishes in six months because Charlie would rather do that than take out the trash and Sam would rather do that than laundry? Dean liked the laundry mat because no one bothered him and he could just put his headphones on and read in a peaceful place that smelled like fluffy, detergenty cotton, but no one wanted to hear about that.

College was when you were supposed to be 'discovering yourself' and Dean had done all his discovering in high school so what was left? Harry (scared of needles biggest wuss he knew, Harry) had gotten a tattoo for christsakes. It was little and looked a bit like a butterfly even though the other man swore up and down it was some super rare endangered moth species that he was studying, but it was more than Dean had to show for his time spent in the most liberal city in Texas. He didn't even have any sexy laundry mat stories, Sam had at least three and Dean could only remember him having done laundry like once.

"Yea that'd be awesome," Maggie was saying to Harry when Dean zoned back in on their conversation, making a concentrated effort to not eavesdrop on what Ed and Alan were talking about even though his heart went out to his friend's roommate, he knew how much being on the receiving end of rejection hurt. The girl blushed across from Dean, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and made a point to lean away from the other man just a bit when she noticed they had an audience. "I mean...I know Stanford is a long drive from L.A., but it would be nice having someone show me around a bit, if it's not a problem for you?"

"Oh God, no," Harry said quickly, putting a hand out to cover the one that Maggie had resting on the table between them. His friend gave the appendage a startled look, like he hadn't meant to do that, but Maggie wasn't pulling away and Dean could physically see the moment when that fact finally clicked for Harry. "For you Mags, no. It wouldn't be a problem at all and like, if you need any help moving or whatever y'know...I can do that too."

"Actually my brother and Alan are supposed to be hel—what the hell is going on over there?" Maggie asked, her voice immediately dropping the shyness that it had held before her gaze had shifted from Harry to where Ed and Alan had been sitting next to Dean, moving to the area behind him where he knew the two men were talking.

Dean glanced over his shoulder to see that Alan and Ed were standing close together, closer than they had been when he had turned around to give them their privacy a moment ago. Ed had one arm crossed over his chest and was rubbing at his mouth with his other hand with an utterly distraught expression on his face; Alan was rubbing the other man soothingly on the arm and talking in low consoling tones that made Dean feel like a complete jerk for how he had taken his own rejected by Aaron. Freaking out like a girl and running away from how embarrassed he felt to the backroom; avoiding his coworker for weeks until the other man's girlfriend had come in under the pretense of looking for a book to tell him that Dean wasn't the first one to make that mistake about Aaron and he probably wouldn't be the last.

"That's what we who are unlucky enough to never find our soul mates sitting next to us in our parent's basement call being 'let down gently'," Dean said hoping it came off as flippantly as he meant for it to while also getting his point across to Maggie and Harry that they weren't fooling anyone. "But it looks like Alan's handling it pretty well."

Maggie's eyes widened across the table and she nodded in a dumbstruck sort of way before grabbing onto the hand that Harry still had covering hers on the table and standing up briskly from her seat; making a beeline for the stairs with the other man barking out a hysterical sounding chuckle as she tugged him along. Dean frowned in confusion at their reaction and turned around again to see that Ed had fisted his hands in the olive green micro-camouflage t-shirt that Alan was wearing, pressing his mouth against the other man's with an expression that looked more surprised than anything else. Alan was smiling softly and happily with his hands frozen on Ed's forearms and shit, Dean would never be lucky enough to get kissed like that ever.

He left them to it, following quickly behind Maggie and Harry while keeping his eyes on his feet when he heard a soft spoken "Wow." come from one of the men behind him, he wasn't sure if it had been Ed or Alan though; he didn't really want to know. Not that he had ever felt that way about Ed and just...gross, it would be just like going on a date with Sam all over again. He knew that sometimes you just liked who you liked, no matter what sex they were; Dorothy was bisexual and had taken it upon herself to introduce Dean, when he had first moved to Texas ,to the wide and scary world of sexuality that was much much more than just the labels of gay or straight that he was used to. Who knew the south was so open-minded?

Fuck, who knew that Ed was so open-minded?

* * *

"_So how's the sticks roomie?"_ Charlie drawled through the phone to him a couple of days later, when she had woken him up wanting to know if she could borrow his car to drive Dorothy to Ikea, apparently the other girl needed yet another bookshelf; he suspected his roommate's literary obsessions were taking over her girlfriend's small one-bedroom apartment, but kept his opinion to himself.

"It's pronounced Sioux Falls," Dean dead-panned back at her, staring at the ceiling above his bed where his old, faded poster of John Lennon was tacked; sagging more and more each time he came home from college due to the dust wafting under its edges from his ever circulating ceiling fan. One day it was going to fall down on him, Dean was pretty sure. "And god, Charlie this trip has been so weird. I've never been readier to come back to Texas."

"_I promise it's weirder here,"_ his roommate said ominously through the line. _"Have you talked to Sam lately?"_

"Dude," Dean sighed, running a hand over his face before he snatched his glasses off of the nightstand next to his bed; it was either get up now or wait for Jo to come barging in on him again acting like she was walking in on him watching porn, which hadn't happened since high school thank you very much, but he need another lecture from his mom about doors having locks for a reason like he needed a bullet to the back of his head. "He sent me some really cryptic text at like two in the morning to let me know he was alive. It was just a bunch of gibberish and little happy star emoticons. Has he come home yet?"

"_Why do you think I'm hiding out at Dor's place? When I got home from dropping you off at the airport he had this like horrible folksy music playing from his bedroom, really loud. Y'know how he does it when he brings a guy home, but Dean it still wasn't loud enough."_

"If it was that guy from the movie theater, then I believe you. Man, Sam has shit taste in guys." Dean mused.

"_Better than no taste in guys," _Charlie pointed out, Dean ignored her. He was good at ignoring both of his roommate's pointed comments about his nonexistent love life by now, just like he was good at ignoring them when they tried to set him up with someone; the last thing he needed was a pity date. _"Anyway, he promised he would pick you up when you flew home. Next Friday right?"_

"Yea, I'm not going to hold my breath on that one," Dean sighed, rolling out his bed with a soft groan and meandering over to power up his computer. "And it's a late flight so if you, y'know the reliable roommate, want to pick me up, I can drop you off at Red7 for Dor. I know you like that karaoke thing that they do on Fridays and I'm probably just going to want to crash. I'm spending the next week hanging out with Jo and her apathy for everything is exhausting."

"_Well, she's a teenager, Dean,"_ Charlie said and he could almost hear her shrugging at him through the phone. _"I'm sure you hated everything too when you were her age, especially since you were all emo and the only gay kid in your town. Besides jerking off, I'm sure your favorite hobbies were sleeping and crying."_

"Oh haha," Dean replied drily, drumming his fingers on his desk for a second before turning away from his computer with an agitated shake of his head. "I didn't jerk off all the time, y'know? I spent some time writing for the school paper."

Now that Charlie had mentioned it though...yea, he had jerked off a lot. And his dreams hadn't stopped being filled with half-formed images of dark hair and teasing glimpses of dark ink on pale muscled skin; he kept waking up hard and aching for release until he could get to the shower as stealthily as possible and the cold water shocked himself back to his senses. Dean needed a Dale Cooper fix like yesterday, but there was no way in hell he was going to watch gay porn while his family was home.

His nerves felt pulled taunt from the arousal thrumming under his skin and his sleep schedule had been entirely thrown off since school had ended; five months of classes that lasted from eight in the morning until four and then work, Dean was used to running off of only three or four hours of sleep. It felt decadent to sleep more than that and his body's natural alarm clock had decided that decadence was something he didn't deserve.

"_Jesus, Dean,"_ Charlie muttered through the phone at him. _"There are more important things in life than writing about which pig won the beauty contest at the county fair, when you get back here Dor and I are taking you out. We've already talked about it."_

"Charlie, I don't think I could stomach another gay bar," Dean complained, heading over to his dresser and sifting through the shirts inside until he found an old faded red Texas Is The Reason tee that would go pretty well with the straight legged jeans he was planning on wearing when he took Jo to the mall later. The lack of summer clothes in his wardrobe was borderline depressing and he figured buying a new swimsuit wouldn't be too overly indulgent, plus his mom would probably force her credit card on him anyway before they left. "I'm just not into camp and if Sam is with us, well I never get looked at anyway."

"_You get looked at plenty,"_ Charlie pointed out. _"You just are picky and you put yourself down and you get so fucking serious about a guy so fucking quickly, its scary. My whole endgame when you get back is to get you laid, not to get you married and if I have to fem you up a little it's going to happen. Between you never getting laid and Sam's being perpetually lost inside someone, well shit Dean I don't know which is more depressing; you not living a little or him living entirely too much."_

"Are you saying you want Sam to settle down?" Dean asked, grinning to himself when he thought of how much the larger man teased him for wanting commitment and stability and someone to come home to at night every night. Picturing Sam with a boyfriend was like picturing the same lumbering moose hugging a circus clown, both of those things were never going to happen. "Because I think that hell will freeze over first."

"_I just want him to slow down, Dean. I mean, you can only get that lucky sleeping around for so long before you get herpes or something, he needs to be more careful."_

"Oh my god, can you imagine Sam in a herpes commercial?" Dean scoffed, tossing his chosen clothes down onto his bed with a hand on his hip and a smirk. "Like one of the ones where they playing basketball or doing yoga and stop mid-downward dog to talk about how they are managing outbreaks?"

"_That would be the bitch face to end all bitch faces,"_ Charlie agreed, giggling at him through the phone before stopping herself. _"But seriously, we don't have to go to a gay bar if you don't want to. You should...oh! Come to karaoke with me and Dor. If you're still hung up on punk boys then I'm sure we can find you someone there, it is punk rock karaoke after all."_

"Charlie, I don't know any punk songs," he said despondently, glancing at the small bit of his record collection that he had left at home during his move to Texas. It was pretty much what was left of his highly regrettable ska phase in junior high along with the record Jo had bought him that he was planning on taking back to Austin. "I mean unless you count The Mighty Mighty Bosstones."

"_You don't have to sing, I know that's a bit outside your comfort zone, but if you wanted to I'm sure one of your little emo numbers would go over pretty well. All of those genres have more in common then you like to think they do, Dean."_ Charlie explained, Dean could hear Dor's voice chattering excitedly in the background; she had been trying to get him to come to her work's karaoke night for ages. His roommate laughed at something her girlfriend said and Dean heard what sounded like a kiss through the tinny receiver of his cell phone. _"Dor said you can sing a Babes in Toyland song, what honey? Oh, she said she would pay you Dean. She said no one ever sings riot grrrl anything, it's all agro-punk and Sheena is a Punk Rocker over and over all night."_

"Maybe I'll just watch or something," Dean offered as a compromise, he felt restless and nervous and now that he was actually going to do something about being chronically single when he got back to Texas, well he wasn't sure he was quite ready to go back. "But hey, um...I've got to get ready to take my sister out, we're going to the mall."

"_Buy some tight jeans!" _Dor screamed through the phone and Dean realized that Charlie had probably had him on speaker phone this whole time, great. _"You've got a great ass, Dean! And no punk boy worth his salt is going to be able to ignore you if you sing; I've heard you in the shower remember?"_

"Thanks, Dor." Dean muttered, blushing from the compliments that he wasn't used to. His shy awkwardness was definitely going to be a hindrance for the two girls who were dead set on getting him laid, it was what had been holding him back this whole time after all. Stammering and blushing and mumbling were not cute, Bridget Jones was a liar. "I'll talk to you guys later okay?"

"_TIGHT JEANS!"_

* * *

Had everyone from Sioux Falls gone crazy except for him? Maybe it was something in the water?

But that still wouldn't explain Ed and Harry who had moved away at the same time he did and came home to visit their parents less often. Ed who was suddenly willing to try being in a relationship with another man when he had always been the first to blush when he caught Dean staring at a guy from another school during their Mathalete tournaments for too long. Harry who had always been crazy, but about Maggie and now the insanity had reached its reasonable conclusion and Dean had not been surprised in the slightest when he had raced up the stairs of Harry's basement so he could give Ed and Alan some privacy to find Harry and Maggie kissing hard against one of the kitchen counters.

Dean had just left then, apologizing to Harry's mom for not staying longer and texting both of his friends once he got home to let them know that he was not upset or annoyed, just happy for them all and saying they should grab dinner before he headed back to Austin and the quartet helped Maggie move to California later in the summer. It had just been too much, seeing all of their fucking happiness and shit and he had just gone home where he had proceeded to watch Dr. Sexy M.D. and eat ice cream with his mom for the next four hours.

Ellen Smith did not ask why her son was upset, because he had always been a moody teenager who had grown into an even moodier young adult and she knew eventually his brooding that he got completely from his father by the way, would attract the kind of person who could make her stoic son lighten up. She wasn't worried about him, she was worried about Jo; sixteen and out all hours of the night only to be brought home by that young fresh-faced deputy at least twice a week for breaking the town's curfew.

Dean understood this, which was why he didn't argue with his mom when she wordlessly handed him her credit card and gently shoved Jo in his direction so they could go have some sibling bonding time and maybe Dean could be a good influence on her. He wasn't totally convinced of his abilities to set her on the straight and narrow path because...well, obvious reasons, but he liked his sassy, foul-mouthed sister. She was brave, much braver than he was, Jo had been in more fights to protect his reputation that Dean was ever likely to be in.

When he'd come out at graduation, he hadn't had any idea how badly his family would suffer for it, but that was the problem with small-town mentality. People boycotted a mechanic just because his gay son had called them all morons once upon a time two years ago; the Smith & Turner salvage yard was only now finally starting to recover from Dean's tipsy pomp and circumstance rant. That's why he had been trying to keep himself under the radar when he took Jo to the mall, avoiding people who he recognized from high school simply because he didn't want to answer all those faux polite 'What are you up to these days?' type questions.

_The same thing I was up to in high school,_ Dean thought when he got cornered and separated from his sister by that one girl who had been in the Mathelets with him, Harry, and Ed. _Working my ass off in my classes and hating myself for not having a social life. _

"So do you have a boyfriend?" The girl asked, Cassie? Maybe? She had always been way too interested in his love life, even in high school. He vaguely remembered her being on the school paper too, doing the gossip column, ick. "I bet you do, you're probably dating like a cowboy or a bull rider or something. Does he let you wear his belt buckles? Ohmygod! Are you his buckle bunny?"

"Um...Cassie," Dean started, running a hand over the back of his neck and glancing over her shoulder to see if he could still spot Jo who had continued down the mall and into a store out of his sight. "Cowboys aren't really my type, but um...y'know it was great to see you and catch up. Look me up on Facebook or something, okay? I've got to find my sister."

"We're already Facebook friends," Cassie replied, frowning slightly when Dean just made a face that he hoped said 'Oh right, of course we are!' before politely pushing past her and racing down to the store that he was pretty sure Jo had ducked into.

It was the Gap, the kind of place that Dean only went to to get cardigans when he couldn't find any that didn't make his stupid, unwanted muscles look steroid inspired at one of the thrift stores in Austin. Jo wasn't a khaki and polo kind of girl, she preferred to dress in Dean's old clothes from before he had hit his last growth spurt and filled over during the summer of his sophomore year along with too short cutoffs of her standard year round jeans that made their dad shudder in disapproval anytime the older man saw his daughter wearing them. So what was she doing in the Gap?

"Excuse me," he said, knocking lightly on the counter in front of the register to get the attention of the girl who was busily hanging up t-shirts on a rack behind it. "But did you see a girl come in here a couple of minutes ago? Blonde, daisy dukes, about yea, high?"

Dean gestured at a spot on himself that was about shoulder height and felt the muscles there slump in relief when the cashier told him that she was in the dressing room. He nodded thanks at her and started towards the back of the store, grimacing at the monochromatic blandness of almost everything on the racks as he went. Dean didn't do a lot of color most of the time, but he was more than content to hold off on doing the whole button-down yuppie look until he was done with his business degree; once he had that he could make Smith & Turner Salvage into something really special.

Outside the dressing rooms he stopped, all the doors were shut and what was he supposed to do? Knock and hope that Jo answered? Dean took a seat in one of the courtesy chairs provided instead, crossing one leg over the other and pulling his phone out so that he could have something to do while he waited on his sister who was probably shoplifting and not actually trying on anything. He smirked at that, Dean would just love to see her explain that one away to their parents if she got caught.

He tapped away at his phone for a little bit, shooting off a message to Sam reminding him to hydrate and eat in the middle of whatever sex fest he was enjoying mostly because he knew it would annoy the other man to no end and then pulling up Spotify so he could look for a song that he might not be too mortified to sing in front of a sea of punks. Dean didn't think that he would sing, probably wouldn't that first time, but it helped to be prepared since Dor had a habit of taking advantage of him when he had been drinking and forcing him to do things he normally wouldn't do.

Like when he had first moved in with Charlie and Sam and she had written down his phone number for their cute waiter on their check. That was the one time he'd had sex this last year; when the other man had told him that Dean was too serious and that he was too young to want something like that just yet, Dean had taken the brush off with as much decorum as he could muster before crying in his room to The Wedding Present on repeat for a couple of days.

Oh, maybe Tiger Trap. It was kind of edgy in a sweet way and it would be cool to sing a song by a girl band, Dor would approve for sure.

"Jesus, Vic!" A voice said from one of the dressing rooms and Dean rolled his eyes at the exasperated tone his sister was using on whoever she was probably on the phone with. "I'm not going to fucking break or anything, just come on! I don't have all day here."

He wasn't expecting to hear a reply, certainly not one from a male voice and Dean fumbled with his phone in shock as he shoved in back in the pockets of his jeans; bending over in his chair with his hands on the floor to see two pairs of feet in one of the dressing rooms. How in the hell did the people who worked here not notice that?!

"Jo, this isn't a good idea. I mean, there are other ways we can see each other."

Dean stood up from his seat, wringing his hands and trying to decide if he needed to just get the girl at the register to handle it or break down the dressing room door to rescue his little sister from whatever stupid situation she had gotten herself into.

"Could you just fuck me already before my idiot brother starts calling me? Be a man, Vic." Jo complained and Dean ducked down again, watching as one set of feet disappeared off the floor just as the door to the dressing room that he suspected his little sister of being in rattled slightly on its hinges. "Much better."

_Oh fucking hell no. _

Dean could deal with pity dates and hearing his roommates have sex all over the place at all hours of the day. He could deal with being intimately involved with his hand more than any other person, he could even admit to having more than just a little kink involving tattoos and piercings even though needles scared the shit out of him. Dean wasn't stupid, he knew he was a freak for wanting a relationship at 21 and for lusting after a stranger who had ordered a fucking coffee from him exactly one fucking time. He was a lot of things, but he was not the type of guy who could deal with hearing his little, his baby sister having sex with some guy in a dressing room at the fucking Gap.

"Joanna Beth Smith!" Dean yelled, surprising himself with how angry and forceful he sounded; maybe for once he could be the overprotective brother and not end up with a busted lip. He was in the right here; he knew he was in the right. "You have got to be kidding me! Get out here right now."

There was some scuffling and some cursing from the other side of the door along with the frantic, muffled giggles that Jo did anytime she had been caught doing something she wasn't supposed to be doing when they were little. Dean went red when the girl that had been at the register rushed back to glare at him disapprovingly, her eyes going wide when she saw the door to the dressing room open to eject Jo, smoothing down her hair and shrugging nonchalantly, and a guy who looked about the same age as Dean (a thought that made his stomach twist in disgust) in a security officer uniform, the shirt of which he was frantically tucking in.

"And who the hell are you?!" Dean asked, stepping up beside Jo with his body angled as much in front of her as he could. It was laughable, him trying to protect her since she was obviously going to do exactly what she wanted to do anyway or she would until she was grounded for the rest of her life. "You know she is sixteen right? That's one six, buddy, that means she's jailbait!"

"Dean he knows how old I am," Jo said behind him and he turned to see her rolling her eyes in that way that always set his teeth on edge. "And Victor's only 18."

"Yea, dude." The guy said, glancing nervously at the Gap employee who was impatiently tapping her foot at the three of them. "I mean, we went to high school together. Victor Henriksenn? I played football?"

Dean shook his head, he had blocked out a lot of high school mostly because it was too painful and too lonely and it just made him want to shut himself away in his house like he had when he was an awkward chubby teenager even though he wasn't anymore. Well, chubby and a teenager at least, he knew the awkward part was a work in progress. A lot of the stuff that had been blocked involved the football and the baseball team and the locker room so no, he didn't remember Victor as being one of his high school tormentors.

But he did remember Victor from the one night that he had woken up to his dad's shouting since he had been home. It had been late, well past two in the morning and Jo had just gotten brought home by what his mom had said was the newest deputy for the Sioux Falls Police Department. Dean remembered thinking it was weird when he had looked out the windows in their living room to see a nondescript black Crown Victoria pulling away, because all of the other SFPD's cop cars were the stereotypical blue and white, complete with matching lights.

"Jesus, Jo," Dean balked turning to face his little sister who looked completely unabashed, not even blushing under the scrutiny of the other people in the store who had stopped to gawp at their scene. "Did you tell mom and dad he was a cop?"

"Sir," the cashier said sternly, glancing around at the other customers. "You can't do this here, I'm going to have to ask you to leave the store."

Jo shrugged at him and gave the cashier a dirty look. "Mom and dad came to their own conclusions, I just didn't correct them. Unlike you, I don't feel the need to deprive myself of the things I want; your whole poor gay martyr complex was relevant in high school Dean, but it's getting really old. No one feels bad for you any more."

"This isn't about me, Jo," Dean replied, pushing his glasses up his nose with an agitated sigh. "This is about you make a spectacle of yourself when you don't have to. You're better than this, fucking having sex in dressing rooms? Really, Jo?"

"Leave," The cashier repeated firmly, pointing towards the door before she rounded on Victor who Dean could admit had the grace to look at least a little bit embarrassed by his actions. "And you, what is your supervisor's name? You're supposed to keep stuff like this from happening in this mall."

"Hey," Jo started, her expression turning stormy. "Don't get his boss involved in this, it was my fault. I'm the one who suggested it."

"Jo, come on. We are going home now," Dean said, catching her by the back of her shirt before his sister could get into one of her world famous cat fights. "And you can explain all of this to mom and dad, this is not my fault."

"Of course," Jo sneered, breaking out of Dean's grasp. "Perfect little Dean, only thing he ever did wrong was liking dick and you can't even do that right. At least I'm living Dean! What are you even doing in Texas? Just a new town to hide away in, you're fucking pathetic."

She whirled around, grabbing on to Victor's arm and pulling him towards the exit; putting up a choice finger at the cashier when she started to make an objection and leaving Dean to make the apologies that he was always making for his sister before following her out of the store. Only he wasn't sure what he was apologizing for anymore, Jo or himself.

Because out of all the people in his life who had tried to help him with the bullying at school or tried to set him up with someone or encouraged him to be more outgoing, no one had ever done it with more ferocity and zeal than his crazy, impetuous little spitfire of a sister. Part of it was probably just her being a hormonal, overdramatic teenager; he knew she would come and apologize to him later and they would watch old Firefly episodes until they fell asleep because that's what they always did after a fight. But she was right, he was pathetic and he needed to start living before it was too late. So even though it was insane, he could understand why she was pissed at him for not making the most of his fresh start in Texas now that he had the chance.

Yea, there must definitely be something in the water because everyone he knew was losing it just a little bit or maybe they were finding it, either way it was fucking crazy.

* * *

Author Note: So yea, I included a Ed Zeddmore/Alan Corbett piercing the veil with gay love fix-it. Mostly because I wanted to and mostly just because. There will actually be CAS in the next chapter, along with pornstache and Sam and some bar-hopping. Watch me name drop my favorite bars in Austin because this fic is entirely self indulgent and selfish, I don't know why you're reading it. But I hope you like it, for whatever that's worth.

And thanks for the reviews and the follows and such, its nice to know that even though I'm getting entirely too nostalgic over this fic that someone out there likes it. :)


	4. Chapter 4

"You could at least have prefaced it with a hello," Sam told him, giving Dean what he and Charlie secretly referred to as 'Bitch Face #34:The Hurt Puppy Dog'. "I mean, I told you I was sorry for running off on you before you left. I even called your mom and reminded her that you needed to be to be smashed in order to ride on a plane. What do I need to do to make it so you aren't pissed anymore? The laundry? Do I need to do the laundry, Dean?"

"Dude, I'm not mad," Dean said quickly, too quickly; revealing that he was still just a little bit mad about being left _again_ by his roommate so that Sam could go off and have some more meaningless sex with someone that he would never speak to again. "All I said was that I'm happy you didn't choke on a dick and die, I was honestly expecting Charlie to show up in mourning wear with the most obscene obituary for you ever clipped out from the Chronicle."

"Yea, but you said it all sarcastic and passive aggressive," Sam pointed out as Dean took the exit off of the highway back towards their house.

He was just so ready to get home so that he could take some valium and try to get rid of the anxiety that had been lingering since he had stepped foot onto the plane. Thanks to _Sam_, his dad had made sure that his son was sober as the grave when he let him go through security at the small regional airport near Sioux Falls; Dean hadn't even had time to stop at the one bar in the airport for something strong before his take off and he had spent the short flight alternating between hyperventilating in the bathroom and biting his nails in his seat. He was pretty sure the businessman sitting next to him had thought he was a hijacker or something.

"Well, y'know I've had a rough couple of weeks, Sammy." Dean explained with a shrug, he really was madder about the alcohol than anything else, but at least with Sam picking him up maybe he could get out of going out to karaoke with Charlie and Dor. "I told you about Jo right?"

"Yea, you said she had a boyfriend or something now." Sam replied, running a hand through his hair as they cut down 7th street, passing the bar that Dor worked at and the one that Sam worked at that was just a little bit farther down one of the streets that branched off the one they were on.

Dean resolutely avoided looking at either of his friends' places of work because he didn't know if Charlie had said something about taking him out to Sam, but he was already planning on how he would beg out of going because he was tired. Not because he was scared of singing in front of a bunch of strangers or because he was even more scared of being rejected by every punk boy in the world because he was just as uncool and overly emotional as he had been in high school. No, he was tired. Or at least that was the best excuse he could come up with.

"Not only does she have boyfriend now," Dean continued jerking the Impala to a stop with a screech as a pedi-cab cut in front of him faster than should be humanly possible, but it was a Friday night and traffic was already moving slow to accommodate the bar patrons rambling around the streets of Austin. There were too short tube dresses, backwards University of Texas baseball caps, and khaki shorts as far as the eye could see on the sidewalks and all Dean could do was rub at his jaw and curse under his breath because as a rule he hated crowds of unfamiliar people. "But her boyfriend was like bestest buddies with the guy who used to swirly me in junior high. Oh, and Victor only wants to be a cop and my dad only loves him like the manly son he never had."

"I'm sure that's not true," Sam argued beside him, causing Dean to grit his teeth because Bobby fucking loved Sam too; he knew his dad loved him too of course, but without fail every time he went home they always argued about the shop and how the older man was still hesitant about Dean taking it over someday. No matter how many business degrees he got or how many times he fixed an unfixable car to prove that he could handle that side of the shop too, the veteran mechanic still had his doubts. "He was worried about you flying. Bob told me he felt bad about buying you the ticket in the first place—"

"Because he didn't want to see me," Dean interrupted, honking his horn at a group of girls dressed up like bad versions of Madonna from the 'Like a Virgin' music video as they slowed to a stop in the crosswalk in front of him to huddle around one of their phones.

They shot him dirty looks and multiple middle fingers as they hurriedly finished crossing the street, headed towards Barbarella if he had to guess and the bar's famous 80s night that he had never been to because y'know crowds. Plus they only played the big hits of the decade and skipped over most everything by My Bloody Valentine and Guided by Voices, which annoyed Dean to no possible end.

"No, you're being ridiculous. Your dad just knows that you don't like to fly, of course he wanted to see you, dumbass," Sam cajoled, reaching out a massive hand to ruffle Dean's hair which just knocked his glasses askew which just made him swerve slightly when he couldn't see the road clearly which just annoyed him more. The larger man threw his head back and laughed at the unamused look Dean leveled at him before holding his ribs that were covered by a tight fitting black V-neck shirt. "Oh my god, your face, Dean. We need to get you laid like yesterday. Speaking of um…so Gabe is at the house."

"Who the fuck is, Gabe?" Dean asked, maneuvering the car as quickly down a side street that connected to the one that would let them avoid the rest of the early weekend traffic as the lumbering metallic beast could manage without taking out the Priuses and Beetles that most of the university students chose to drive that were parked along the sides of the street.

"He's um…that guy, y'know the guy from the movie theater?"

"Pornstache!" Dean exclaimed, pressing hard on the accelerator, god he was so ready for this day and this week and this fucking soap opera that was his life to be over already. "Are you fucking kidding me right now?"

He saw Sam shake his head, rolling his eyes at the same time in a way that Dean had never quiet been able to replicate himself. "Don't call him that, apparently it's a sensitive subject no matter how appropriate the nickname is. I'm talking like Ron Jeremy big, Dean. OH wait! I think I might have a picture…"

"NO! Please no," Dean begged, hunching over the steering wheel when Sam pulled out his phone and started to tap around on the touch screen; frowning in concentration. He just wanted to sleep in his own bed tonight, in the sheets that didn't remind him of how lonely and miserable his life was and had been for almost as long as he could remember and he really really did not want to see a picture of his best friend's latest fuck buddy's junk. "Just…why is he there?"

"Well, his brother showed up unannounced," Sam explained, smirking at the lit up screen on his phone for a second before shoving the device back into the pocket of his jeans. "Cas called Gabe from the bus station a couple of days ago saying that the place he had been living at in Cincinnati had gotten condemned and that he needed a place to crash for a little bit. Apparently it's like a really weird unresolved sexual tension situation between his brother and one of his roommates and Gabe just needed to get away from it for a little while."

"But why is he at our house? I'm sure he had somewhere else he could have gone, you only just met him." Dean asked, unconvinced by the whole thing because he had only been gone two weeks and there was no way that everyone could have lost their minds while he was gone; Charlie was unlikely to be okay with one of Sam's hookups just hanging around the house, especially since their roommate tended to pick guys that had more muscles than brains or tact.

"You sound so shocked," the other man scoffed, fidgeting self-consciously with his seat belt as they turned onto the hill that led to their house. "Gabriel is just a nice guy, okay? He was in an uncomfortable situation and I told him he could stay. Chill, is not like he is sleeping in your bed or anything."

"That wasn't what I was worried about," Dean mumbled, clearing his throat and trying to not remember how desperately hopeful he had been on the one date he and Sam had gone on before it had turned out to be awkward as hell; he didn't want Gabriel to think that Sam was doing anything more than being the nice person that he was. "He knows that you're not like…looking for anything right?"

"Um…yea, of course," Sam replied non-committally, shrugging in the passenger seat of the Impala as they pulled to a stop in front of the house and Dean cut the engine. "We did look through your porn stash though, so if you notice some stuff moved around in your room…"

"I had all of that organized—" Dean started to complain, snatching his duffle bag full of clothes that his mom had washed for him before he left out of the backseat and then clambering out of the car to follow after the larger man who was already headed toward the front porch.

"Yea, we noticed," Sam teased, digging his keys out of his pocket since he had reached the front door before Dean had. "Gabe said that porn star you like so much kinda looks like his brother, so if you play your cards right then maybe he can set you two up or something."

"Sam I don't thi—"he started, intending to tell the other man that he didn't think that was a good idea because he had promised Charlie he would relax on the whole frantic boyfriend search that it felt like he was constantly engaged in and then maybe add something about how he highly doubted any brother of the short mustachioed man from the movie theater could look anything like Dale Cooper who was tall and muscled and tattooed.

But what cut him off was the scream, the scream that couldn't be mistaken as belonging to anyone other than Charlie; both he and Sam pushed past each other to get into the house so they could rescue their roommate from whatever was brutally murdering her when they stumbled into the kitchen where Dor was sitting perched on the top of the breakfast nook with her face buried in her hands.

"Is it over yet?" She asked, peeking between her fingers to look at where Charlie was sitting in one of the kitchen chairs with her small hands roaming over her now short, like really short hair. "Oh baby, your hair…"

"Well, here's the majority of it," Gabriel said blandly, slinging the long end of Charlie's shorn pony tail over her shoulder before he batted away her hands and frowned in concentration at her head. "So you said a pixie cut, right?"

Charlie just nodded and pulled her pony tail down into her lap with a shocked expression on her face. She was staring so intently at the limp bundle of red hair that was no longer attached to her skull that Dean didn't even realize that she was speaking until he heard his name. "Hey Sam, hey Dean. So um…Gabe is giving me a haircut."

"Oh well this must be Dean then," the shorter man announced, waving his hand that was holding a small pair of beautician scissors in Dean and Sam's direction. He gave Dean a serious once over, eyes lingering on his neck and on his chest and other areas that made him uncomfortable thinking about in the context of it being one of Sam's hookups looking at him like that. Dean felt very much like a piece of meat as he crossed his arms over his chest tightly and shifted his weight to his other foot. "You were right Sammy, he is super cute. Very um…Peter Parker-esque with the glasses and everything, probably too sweet and innocent for Cassie. Sorry, babydoll, my little brother would eat you alive."

"Why have you been talking about me?" Dean hissed to Sam, smiling tightly at Gabriel before he started towards his room; he had to move fast before the shock wore off and either Charlie or Dor started asking him about going out to karaoke. "In fact, why have you been talking at all? I thought you liked your hookups to be a one and done type of deal. Since when do you sit around with them and plot blind dates for me after having sex with them?"

"We weren't plotting a blind date," Sam answered, settling down in Dean's computer chair at his desk like the larger man had known that would be the first thing that Dean went to and was blocking him from turning the device on. "When we found your porn, Gabe said something about his brother looking like that actor you like and I may have jokingly said something about you jerking off to his brother every night and it kind of all snowballed from there. I haven't even met the guy so I doubt you would even like him, don't worry we were just joking."

"It's really nice to know that when I'm not here I'm just the butt of everyone's jokes," Dean grumbled, tossing his duffle bag down on his bed and then hesitating for a second before he crossed over to his dresser and started rifling out a pair of pajama pants. Normally, he just slept in boxers and so did Sam and it wasn't a big deal, but with the way Gabe had been looking at him, assessing, he wanted to have as many layers covering him as possible. "How long is your new best buddy going to be here anyway?"

"Dean we talk about you because we worry," Sam explained, stretching his legs out in front of him with a sigh. "When you're here you're either fun and sarcastic and like this fount of knowledge about shit like comic books and music that I will never know anything about or you're like a total shut in, especially during finals. It's a weird extreme and when you go home all we get are texts talking about how much you hate it there and how going back to Sioux Falls makes you all anxious and shit, but you still plan on taking over your dad's shop someday, I just don't understand. None of us do, we just want you to be happy, Dean. And okay, I know Gabriel is like a complete stranger to you, but he's a good guy, you should give him a chance. Come out with us tonight, we're meeting his brother and his roommates at Stubb's, Ben Kweller is playing a secret show."

That sounded a whole lot better than what he had been planning to do, which was to sit around and either watch porn because he hadn't been able to do more than fantasize and get reacquainted with his hand like he hadn't been since high school when he was at home or reorganize his record collection because he had watched _High Fidelity_ with Jo instead of _Firefly_ when they made up and the idea of chronological organization seemed like a unique challenge.

But Dor chose that moment, the moment when Dean was wavering and holding a pair of pajama pants and debating about maybe possibly proving Gabriel wrong and hooking up with the other man's brother anyway just to prove that he wasn't as sweet and innocent and boring as everyone thought he was, to amble into his room and snatch up his duffle bag that had been sitting unsuspectingly on his bed.

"No, he's coming to punk rock karaoke with me and Charlie," Dorothy announced, unzipping his bag and rifling through the contents until she found the pair of jeans that Dean had bought after returning to the mall sans Jo in order to get them as well as a new swimsuit. "Ah-ha! See he wants to walk on the tight pants side of life with me and Charlie, not the alt-country thing you're doing now with Gabriel and his whole crazy house of people. Did he tell you that his roommates are apparently fighting over his brother? You need to stay out of that psycho love troika, Dean."

"You do realize that you just called them a team of horses, right?" Dean asked softly even as Sam geared himself up to defend Gabriel who really must have made an impression on his perpetual bachelor lifestyle.

"Hey, I liked Ben Kweller before Gabe came along," Sam said quickly, glancing towards the open door and then back at Dean. "And Dean likes him too, right? I was just trying to keep him from shutting himself away with his books and his porn like some crabby old man, but if you guys already had plans…"

"Can we just agree that Dean is in love with a porn star and move on already?" Charlie called from the living room, earning a rousing laugh that could only belong to Gabriel. "He's coming with us. I have someone that I want him to meet and he has exactly fifteen minutes to get ready before this haircut is done. So leave him alone already!"

Dean sighed and ran a hand over his face, shoving his pajama pants back into his dresser and moving to his closet instead so that he could find a shirt to wear that might not make him look like a dork. All he had wanted to do was get home where things were normal and easy, but no. He cast a glance over his shoulder to see Sam and Dor having a silent conversation with their eyes until the girl noticed him watching and smiled sheepishly.

"Well, you heard the wife, Sam," Dor said in faux resignation. "Guess we better leave loverboy to it then. Oh, Dean did you pick out a song?"

"Dean's singing?" Sam asked wryly and Dean just stuck his head into his closet in an effort to hide how red he as pretty certain his face was turning. "Well, I don't know if I'll be able to live with myself if I miss that."

* * *

It took closer to an hour for Dean and Charlie and Dor to actually get out of the house and piled into the Impala before they could head down to Red7 for the karaoke night that Dean really didn't want to go to. Mostly because after Gabe finished with Charlie's hair, he decided he wanted to do Dean's too, especially after being told by Sam about his most recent obsession with punk boys and the one that got away during SXSW.

Gabriel had gone on and on about how he used to dye his brother's hair for him when they were teenagers and blah blah whatever Dean had stopped listening after Gabe had started talking about a bet that he had made with the younger man that he had known he wouldn't win. Dean just assumed that the talking was something they taught you in beauty school, some way of making the fact that you were a stranger touching another stranger's hair not so awkward for all the parties involved, but he had had such a hard time not talking back that he didn't even realize that the other man was coming at him with a stick of black eyeliner that he had gotten from one of the girls until Sam had to physically remove Gabe from the room by picking him up and carrying him off.

He had wanted to ask Gabe why it was so easy for him to talk to people he didn't know and how someone so fundamentally different from Sam, who was usually soft-spoken and mysterious outside of the bedroom in that way that just completely put other people at ease and made them feel safe, had managed to rope his roommate into liking him so much; because it was obvious that Sam liked the other man more than he was willing to admit, never like ever had Dean seen his friend go this far out of his way to help out one of his random hookups. But someone had to be the skeptic and Dean had always been good at filling that role for his friends.

It took another fifteen minutes to actually find a parking spot downtown now that the Austin nightlife was in full swing; police had cordoned off Sixth Street and were lazily eyeing the revelers who they were more than used to coming and asking them for pictures or directions or which bar they liked the best as they leaned against the hoods of their cruisers and chatted about whatever it was that cops chatted about with each other. Dean knew that by the end of the night they would be chauffeuring some of the more inebriated frat boys and sorority girls home to Greek row, but for now the Austin police presence was content to eat commped slices of pizza off of paper plates and incredulously eye some of the more outrageous fashion statements walking up and down the sidewalks beside them.

Dean felt like one of those walking fashion disasters as he trailed behind Charlie and Dor toward Red7 from where they had ended up parking his car under the bridge that had the highway running over it. His shirt, that wasn't even his shirt but one of Dor's that she had been holding onto since her chubbier, junior high days, felt too short and his jeans felt like they were being dragged off of his hips by the heavy silver studded leather belt that Charlie had grabbed for him as they were dashing out the door once they realized that her girlfriend was running late to wok because of Dean's impromptu makeover. They hadn't let him shave, and honestly he hadn't had time after Gabe had finished artfully spiking up his hair using some kind of glue that the other man swore up and down was strong enough to keep liberty spikes airborne, but it felt weird and he wasn't the only one who kept twitching their hand toward their hair, Charlie was doing it too.

Charlie also tried to convince him that eyeliner was the way to go, citing the fact that it had been one of the most memorable features about his mystery punk boy that he had obsessed over until it felt stalkerish after SXSW and that Dean had pretty amazing eyes, but Dean had put his foot down about that because he already couldn't see half the time anyway and he didn't want to have his eyes stinging from some cosmetic that he wasn't used to wearing when he was trying to look alluring and attractive. Watery eyes were pretty much the opposite of attractive.

"Dean your ass looks absolutely fantastic," Dor announced as she ushered him and Charlie past the smirking girl and boy who were manning the door' checking ids with their sharpies and their stamps at the ready to differentiate those who were drinking from those who weren't.

Dean hesitated before following his friends because holy shit he was going to need more than a few drinks before he could even think about getting up on stage and singing anything, but he also knew that Dor was going to serve him regardless of whether he had a stamp or not; just like she did Sam even though it broke all the rules of the bar and more than just a few laws when she served the underage man anything stronger than a soda.

He felt like he could already feel the eyes on him, assessing gazes coming from all corners of the room that were making him feel itchy and too noticeable. Dean was much more comfortable and used to fading quietly into the background and just observing everyone around him; yea, it meant he was a wallflower, but he liked to make up stories for the people he noticed in his head. Why was that girl standing that close to that guy even though he was clearly holding hands with a different girl? Where did that guy get that awesome looking tattoo done at? Did his mom approve of her son having a C3PO tattoo? Probably not, but Dean liked making up the awkward family dinner where the mom had first noticed the ink on her son; it was just something he had always done when he was nervous and couldn't talk to people.

And man, was he nervous and fuck, weren't there a lot of people here? Dean was pretty sure that he was going to throw up long before he ever got a chance to sing, drinks or no drinks. Punk rock karaoke happened at Red7's indoors bar which was smaller and more intimate, painted in shades of red and yellow along with the club's hammer and sickle communist logo peppered in amongst the old show flyers that were peeling off the black painted brick walls. It wasn't his first time being there, but it was the first time that Dean had been there when the bar was actually doing something besides setting up for a show later in the day or playing host to the early afternoon bar goers that he had always found slightly depressing.

Someone was already up on stage, belting out a poppy sounding anthem that kept going on and on about a TV party and drinking with the house band doing its level best to make the guy singing sound not completely terrible even though he kept changing the tempo every few lines. The whole deal that made Red7's karaoke night one that made people from all over the city flock out in droves and pack the small indoor bar was the live band backing whoever was singing. This wasn't your mom and dad's basement karaoke machine.

The band was comprised of a strange assortment of Austin natives and Seattle imports; they mostly tried to play punk songs, because they were an actual punk band and this was just a steady gig to pay the bills to them, but Dor had told him that they weren't above knocking out Brittney Spears or a top 40s hit if they knew the basic melody. Dean had no intention of singing something like that, but when he had told Charlie and Dor in the car what he wanted to sing he had been met first with confused silence until he rifled out an old mixtape from his glove compartment and played them the song and then both girls were chattering about how perfectly it fit him and how the song coupled with his borrowed pseudo-punk look would surely get him the hottest guy in the bar.

Dor headed behind the bar first thing and snagged Dean and Charlie a couple of beers, dropping a kiss onto her girlfriend's cheek with a little hop across the bartop and hand ran quickly through the now drastically shorter strands of hair at the back of Charlie's neck. The redhead was blushing when she pulled away from Dorothy and promptly started pulling Dean away from the bar and towards the sign-up sheet for singing that was near the front of the stage.

"Charlie, can't I get a couple of drinks in me first?" Dean whined, muttering apologies to the people that Charlie was just barely managing to squeeze through as she pulled him along; he kept knocking into them and it made his glasses rattle imperiously on his face.

"Do you want an even bigger audience than this?" Charlie asked in return, turning around to raise an eyebrow at him once they got to the line at the front for the sign up. The list was being manned by a burly looking guy with a beard wearing an old black fisherman's hat and an off-white Henley that had the sleeves pushed up slightly. "Plus I wanted you to meet Benny, Dor thinks you two will really click."

"This isn't like a date set up or anything, is it?" he asked warily, craning his neck to get a better look at the guy. Not exactly his type lately, but he had a nice smile and it wasn't like Dean could be choosy when no one wanted him to begin with.

"No!" Charlie exclaimed, laughing and shaking her head quickly causing the long dangling earrings that she was wearing to swing against her neck. "Benny is like the straightest arrow in the quiver, but Dor says he's been on the punk scene here since he was a fresh faced teenager straight from the bayou. If anyone knows who your mystery guy is then it's going to be Benny."

"I thought I told you that I was giving up on that," Dean shout-talked, the music was louder now that they were closer to the stage and there was a girl up there singing a raucous rendition of _Seether _by Veruca Salt, a song that Dean recognized from a tape that Dor had left in his car once.

He hoped the music also hid how miserable his voice sounded when he thought of the punk boy with the unwanted mohawk and the horrible girl who had made it painfully clear that they were together. Dean hoped that the dim smoky atmosphere covered up the brief flash of pain that he knew crossed his face too, especially since Charlie chose the exact moment that it happened to turn around and look at him incredulously.

"Oh honey," Charlie cooed, cupping his jaw for a sisterly half-second before she slapped his cheek lightly and took his hand to hold as the line continue its sedate pace closer to the stage. "You may think you have given up, but you haven't."

"What about the whole 'get me laid, not get me married' speil?" Dean asked, swallowing hard when he noticed they were next in line and that with the way the band was powering through the short songs that people were picking he would be singing long before he was drunk enough to actually want to.

"No one said you can't have fun while you're looking for the one," Charlie answered, winking at him at the same time she gave his hand a consolatory squeeze. "Trust me; I gave a lot of lip before I found the person I actually wanted to pay lip service to. Not to say it wasn't fun, but I was on the verge of carpal tunnel by the time I met Dor and I could've bought stock in Chapstick with how much I spent on that shit."

"Did you just make a joke about eating someone out?" Benny asked, catching the tail end of their conversation as Charlie tugged Dean the last couple of steps to the small table that was set up beside the stairs that led to the stage. "I never thought I would live to see the day, hanging out with that munchkin Gabe must be rubbing off on you. Whoa! Hold on guys."

The larger man turned quickly and gave the shell shocked looking girl who had just finished singing a hand down as she stumbled down the steps and to his credit, Benny hardly batted an eye when she leaned in close with a breathed thanks and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Dean tried to contain his eye roll and just thanked whoever was listening that Dor and Charlie hadn't actually been trying to set him up with this guy, he probably had a different girl in his bed every night working at a place like this. In Dean's experience, nice guys only finished last when it was him or when it was a Green Day song.

"You know Gabriel?" Dean asked over the music, leaning over the table so that he could read the names of the songs that other people were singing where they were written in Benny's spiral notebook.

"Oh yea," Benny said with a shrug, having the grace to blush from the other girl's attention as he turned back to face Charlie and Dean; picking up his pen in a business-like manner as he went. "Guy used to come into the Bear twice a week or so when his ex still worked there and after Baldur ran off to Baton Rouge I gave Gabe a shoulder to cry on a couple of times, at least until he met Sam. Am I right, Charlie?"

"I'm pretty sure Sam's in love with him, but is too jaded to say it," Charlie agreed, bumping her shoulder into Dean's and drawing the larger man's attention towards him as a result. "But this strapping young buck is my other roommate, Dean."

"Oh!" Benny exclaimed, sticking out a massive hand for Dean to shake and pulling him into clap him on the back briskly across the table separating them. "Dorothy's told me a lot about you. Said you were looking for a guy with a mohawk? Might have been around during spring break?"

"Not really looking," Dean mumbled, realizing how crazy and insane and how creepy it was that he could still picture the exact way that the smoke had curled out of the punk boy's mouth as he had leaned against the wall at Cheapo's and how he had definitely been having reoccurring dreams about mapping out dark tattoos on pale skin with his tongue even though the person that the tattoos belonged to was faceless Dean just knew who it was because there was only one person it could be. Clarence. Blue eyes. "Just like…wondering if he's still alive. Y'know, it's more of a general concern that one person has for another person that they've never really spoken to or formally met. That kind of concern."

"So…" Benny said, looking confusedly between Charlie and Dean. "You don't actually know this person? Like anything about him that might help me figure out who he is for you so that you can go pine after him in private like a normal person? A name maybe?"

"No," Dean said quickly waving away the offer because yep, he was super fucking creepy and he didn't need more people knowing about how desperate he was than the people who already did know. "Just um…forget it. Forget Dor said anything or that I said anything, just um…I want to sing I guess."

"Alright, brother," Benny said with a shrug, sliding the notebook in Dean's direction and holding the pen out to him; it felt like a challenge in a lot of different ways. "I mean if you're sure you want to forget the whole thing, singing's the best way to get over your troubles."

Dean nodded and took the pen, quickly scribbling out the name of the song that he wanted to sing before he lost his nerve; just like he had lost his nerve when he had had the chance to talk to Clarence and still hadn't done it.

"I think I need another drink," Dean said to Charlie, barely resisting the urge to scrub an agitated hand through is gel hardened hair like he usually did when he was nervous and instead dropping a hand to rub at his jaw instead. He hadn't shaved since before leaving Sioux Falls and he was on the border between bearded and five o'clock shadow that Gabe had sworn any guy with half a dick would want to eat off of his jawline.

"Okay, you stay here," Charlie said quickly, taking the empty bottle that he had just finished downing out of his hand and replacing it with her own that was still half full and taking a pushing him closer towards Benny. "I will get you another drink, you two talk about music and whatever shit it is guys talk about when girls aren't around. I'll be back before you sing, I promise."

Dean wanted to argue with Charlie or maybe just tag along behind her so that he wouldn't be left alone to make awkward small talk with this guy who he had just met, but he didn't want to seem rude so he just cleared his throat and crossed his arms over his chest instead. He smiled tightly at Benny who looked faintly amused by how uncomfortable he was, but thankfully didn't comment on it any more than just raising his eyebrows and crossing a name off the top of the list as the guy clambered up on the stage to sing _Suburban Home_ which was pretty much the only song Dean knew by the Descendents because it was the only song he had listened to before clicking next on the Pandora station that was pulling up stuff that he might like that was related to Jets to Brazil.

The station had gotten out of control and soon after that he had switched to playing records because how in the hell was Go Sailor related to Operation Ivy he had no idea, but he hadn't wanted to listen to anything other than sad and mopey music at the time and his record collection was full of that so at least this way he got exactly what he wanted.

"So when you say you know Gabe from the Bear," Dean started, reaching for something that he could use to make conversation with Benny that wasn't about him or the stupid crush he was apparently still holding onto months after it was sane and normal for him to have stopped wanting something that he was never going to have. "Do you mean like…I mean, what exactly is 'the Bear'?"

"Oh," Benny said with a wide and winsome smile, Dean could see why the girls maybe threw themselves at someone who was so open about his amusement; if only Dean could be that carefree all the time. "That. Um…well the Bear is The Iron Bear, that bar down 8th and Colorado. My cousin owns the place and I help him out sometimes by bartending when they have really big events. I was down there during SXSW when Allison Weiss played, it was pretty much the best show I've ever been to."

Dean furrowed his brow in confusion, remembering all of the times that Sam had tried to get him to go to The Iron Bear when Sam wanted to pick up someone who could manhandle him for once; it was a bear bar, like a big gay bear bar and that definitely was not Dean's scene.

"Charlie said you were straight?" Dean said trying to sound a lot less annoyed than he felt because god help Charlie and Dor if this really was a set up after all. "What are you doing working at a bear bar?"

"Well, it's a family thing," Benny replied with a shrug, reluctantly reciprocating the high five from the guy who was coming down off the stage and then ushering the girl ahead of Dean up who looked like she belonged at Barbarella more than she belonged at a punk rock karaoke night; it was no surprise that she was singing Blondie. "Plus, have you seen me? I'd be stupid to not pick up a couple of shifts there every once in a while. Those guys are outrageous tippers and real friendly, even when they find out I'm not on the market they still tip me well. But I guess you know all about what it's like to be a piece of eye candy, huh?"

"Hmmm, not really," Dean said, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck; he felt like he was being stared at again and it was reminding him too much of high school when the guys who had picked on him had waited predatorily until he was alone so they could rough him up a little bit. "I mean, I prefer to kind of just blend in; not stick out y'know?"

"You're shy, but you're still getting up on stage at a huge karaoke night to sing? You must have lost a bet or something," Benny joked, tilting his head at the stage thoughtfully for a second. "But hey, at least you didn't have to shave your head or anything. Maybe this is worse for you though, Gabe tends to have a sixth sense about what a person's worst fear is. Next time I see him I'll let him know this was a particularly cruel and unusual punishment."

"Thanks?" Dean was more than confused now, he hadn't lost a bet to Gabriel. In fact, he almost did actually want to sing just to see if he could do it without throwing up everywhere, but also maybe he wanted it to be a metaphor for his coming out of his shell and being willing to try new things. Or maybe he was putting too much stock in how much of a difference one round of karaoke could actually make in his life.

Benny just nodded and made a meaningful gesture at the girl guitarist in the house band who was standing closest to him; she raised an eyebrow at him and went into the ending riff for the song that they were playing. It was a blessing for the audience who burst into cheers when the girl who had been singing in a key only dogs could hear took a sweeping bow, hooking the microphone back into the stand before blowing a few kisses and strutting off the stage with more confidence than Dean was pretty sure he would ever feel in his life.

Dean felt his phone buzz in his pocket when the girl knelt down next to Benny, looking at the list of songs that they still needed to play before she raised an eyebrow in Dean's direction. He chose to ignore it, knowing that she was probably judging him for picking a song that wasn't exactly punk and wasn't exactly emo, but somewhere in the middle where it probably would earn him the attention of exactly no one in the bar because no one would know what it was.

Whatever, it was what he wanted to sing and Charlie had already made him take off the shirt that he had tried to wear for the same band forcing him into Dor's old shirt that barely fit and made him feel naked and advertised Siouxsie and the Banshees who he had never ever once listened to. He felt like a fraud and singing Archers of Loaf would help him center himself again. But his pants were also too tight for him to get his phone out of his pocket. So when Benny ushered him up onto the stage, holding the mostly empty second beer with his hand half shoved into the ultra small pocket of the stupid pants that Dor had insisted he buy, Dean just put on his most sheepish smile and pried his hand free so that he could set the beer bottle down at his feet and did his level best to ignore the insistent buzzing coming from his phone.

Dean tried to squint against the too bright light, silently thanking Sam for hauling Gabe and his eyeliner away from him because he was already sweating and already couldn't see any father than the people who were pressed right up against the short stage which was also probably a blessing because he knew everyone was watching him and for the first time since junior high Dean felt the crushing, vice-like tension on his lungs that had accompanied his asthma attacks when it was already too late for his inhaler to do any good. Someone cat-called him, whistle piercing though the chatter and the tuning of the guitarist beside him who had turned briefly to confer with the rest of the band about the song he was singing and making Dean blush scarlet red under the lights that he knew were picking up every move he made.

"What's your name, cutie!?" A girl shouted out of the crowd; Dean almost recognized it as Charlie's voice. In fact, he was pretty sure it was Charlie and he made a mental note to drink all of her expensive organic apple juice as soon as he got home, right in front of her if he could manage it.

Dean leaned in towards the microphone, wincing slightly when it hit his chin and reeled from the static thump it made that sounded ultra loud now that he was surrounded by speakers on all sides. He forced a chuckle that he didn't feel, mostly to keep himself from crying over how badly he was already fucking this all up and pushed his glasses up his nose, "My name is Dean and um…most of you have probably never heard this song."

He glanced over at the guitarist who gave him an encouraging nod before the drummer started the tap in on the edge of the drum head, _1-2-3-4._

"Stuck a pin in your backbone," Dean started, trying his damndest to not butcher the lyrics because he knew he was no Eric Bachmann, but _Web in Front_ had been his penultimate feel-better-when-everything-else-is-shit song for as long as he could remember and he wanted to do it justice even if no one else in the crowd 'got it'. "Spoke it down from there, all I ever wanted was to be your spine. Lost your friction and you slid for a mile. Overdone, overdrive, overlive, override."

Charlie appeared at the front of the crowd, elbowing her way past a very tall guy who had a camera looped lazily around his next and the girl who had been singing Blondie as she pulled Dor along with her to stand in front of him. She held a new beer out to him Dean took it in between verses, swigging a mouthful of it which earned him a cheer from somewhere farther back in the crowd; this time from a deeper sounding male voice

"And there's a chance that things'll get weird, yea that's a possibility. Although I didn't do anything, no I didn't do anything."

His favorite part was next and Dor and Charlie were cheering for him and even though Sam and Gabe had decided to go to see Ben Kweller instead, expecting Dean to be singing much later than he actually had ended up doing, it was still really fucking cool and not nearly as scary as he had thought it would be; especially since he could hardly see anyone. He just tried very hard to ignore the fact that they could all still see him, see every time he swayed into the verses in his too tight jeans and his too stiff hair with his phone that was just buzzing along with the rest of his nerves going off distantly in his pocket. As long as he could ignore all of that, this was perfect.

"And a mouth kept shut and a tongue twist tie, you're the web in front you're the favorite lie. You're the buck my lip, you're the lash my lie. You're the web in front of a favorite lie. Stuck a pin in your backbone, spoke it down from there. All I ever wanted was to be your spine, I've got a magnet in my head. A magnet in my head, extra thick, extra long the way it was wasted…wasted."

The house band did a very early nineties worthy trill at the end of the song as Dean fought to catch his breath back, he was sweating just a bit which was gross, but he could deal as long as the crowd was clapping and cheering for this new and improved Dean would could get up on stage and sing in front of strangers. Even if it was only for tonight and tomorrow he went back to being the boring bookstore guy that no one looked twice at least it made the last two weeks he had spent at home being noticed for all the reasons he didn't want to be just like in high school entirely worth it because it had brought him to this moment when he felt okay with being weird.

Dean gave a self conscious wave and picked up his beer, gesturing to Charlie and Dor that he would meet them at the bar before he was swept off the stage by the band who kept thanking him from some strange reason. They said it was because he picked a song that they had to turn off autopilot to play and Dean didn't get it, but he did in an almost-not-really get it sort of way. He supposed that karaoke night was probably the most tedious night of the week for the musicians who had found a way to live while still doing what they loved, maybe he would be that lucky someday and working on cars would just be the tedious thing he had to do in order to keeping doing what he loved.

Benny gave him a sharp clap on the back as he passed the larger man and scream spoke something about someone looking for him, which Dean figured was probably Charlie or Dor who were both totally hopeless when it came to reading hand signals that they were probably lurking close by to ambush him with girly-stained kisses and high pitched squealing. So he nodded and started in the direction of the bar cautiously, tugging down his borrowed shirt in an effort to maybe make it long enough to at least go over his belt instead of just hovering uncomfortably where it would show off skin if he so much as leaned the wrong way.

When he got there all he found was the other guy who had been working the bar when he and Charlie and Dorothy had gotten there and no matter what he did the alt-bro was totally engrossed in making shots and goo-goo eyes at the girls who were at the opposite end as him to hear him when Dean called for his attention.

_So much for not turning invisible again until tomorrow,_ Dean thought, misery threatening to dampen his high spirits as he downed the last of his beer in a couple of fast gulps and turned to head towards the bathroom so he could see how badly he had sweated through his form-fitting clothes.

He had only taken a couple of steps when he felt the tap on his shoulder, firm and purposeful so it was probably Charlie and she was probably about to leap into his arms so Dean steeled himself for that when he turned to face her, forcing a smile on his face that fell as soon as he saw that it wasn't Charlie. It wasn't Charlie at all.

"So this is what baristas do on their days off?" The punk boy asked, lip ring sparkling just as brightly as Dean remembered as Clarence leveled a smirk at him that made him feel like he had missed the punchline of the best joke in the world.

His hair had grown back, it was still shorter on the sides than it had been that first time that Dean had seen him, but it wasn't completely gone either like it had been at SXSW. There was a new tattoo, one that Dean knew hadn't been there when he had last seen the other man because every single fucking feature had been burned into his memory and he had fantasized so many times about exactly this, well maybe not _exactly_ this, happening that he wasn't likely to have missed the large tattoo on the other man's right forearm of a slim dagger that spanned the entire length.

Clarence was wearing tight black jeans that rivaled Dean's and probably beat them by about a mile in snugness along with a faded navy Matador Records t-shirt that made the blue that were his eyes pop when they should have faded in the dim lighting of the club like Dean was sure his own had done. Maybe it was the eyeliner that the other man was wearing as his eyes roved up and down Dean's body, fuck maybe he should've let Gabe put that stupid eyeliner on him.

"Y'know, I think I liked the whole introverted bookworm look a little better," Clarence joked, taking a step closer to Dean and causing his lungs to remind him that _oh, yea breathing is something you need to do every once in a while if you want to stay alive._ "Can I buy you a drink?"

"Oh god yes," Dean breathed, only realizing that he sounded more than a little bit like John Watson who he had never thought was gay when Charlie and Dor argued all the time that he so totally was, but y'know what? Maybe he fucking was.

* * *

Author Note: I've had writer's block guys, like majorly whoa. And honestly, I was going to keep you in suspense about Cas...ahem Clarence showing back up in this story for at least one more chapter, but I got impatient and I need him okay. I needed him in this story like right the fuck yesterday so he's here now and we can all breath a little easier. Let me know what you think and hopefully my writer's block has taken a hike for a good long while. xoxo


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